


The Theology of Grace

by PKI



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Angels, F/F, F/M, Fallen Angels, Gen, Gnosticism, M/M, Mysticism, Non-compliant with 'The Book of Dust' series although elements may appear, Other Mythology, Panserbjorne Politics, Politics, Religion, Religious Conflict, Religious Cults, Religious Fanaticism, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Ten Years Post 'The Amber Spyglass', The Magisterium - Freeform, Theology, Witch Politics, allusion to suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2020-11-23 21:56:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20896733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PKI/pseuds/PKI
Summary: Ten years after Lord Asriel's rebellion, after the closing of the doors and the fall of the Authority, the worlds rest on a razor's edge. Ancient forces, dark and deep, stir from their millennia of slumber. Xaphania and her rebel Angels that survived the war are unequipped and unprepared to meet the threat. A sultry song, long lost to the cacophony of the universe, drifts from the forgotten Garden. Yet all is drowned in the distracted flood of life.





	1. Anastasis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edited and re-uploaded 7/13/2020

_ “...I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, _

_ who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, _

_ born of the Virgin Mary, _

_ suffered under Pontius Pilate, _

_ was crucified, died, and was buried; _

_ **he descended to the dead** …” _

-Excerpt from '_The Apostles' Creed _’

*************************

**33 C.E**

The child shivered pitifully, grasping a ball of faded wool to her trembling breast. The cold here was a dull sort of thing, a faint throb that echoed ceaselessly through one’s bones. He had seen such awful sights before this child: the fear, the confusion, the panic at the loss of one’s soul. It was simpler when his passengers had never known their soul in the mortal world. They still felt the terrible heart-rending pain—but the effect was muted. But this girl, this poor little child, oh how she wept. This girl had known her soul and loved him well. _ Dæmons, _ he remembered faintly, _ they call them dæmons _. 

The boat rocked softly in the ever placid waters, their depths obscured by swirling ash mixed with clay like dirt swept up from the sea bed. The girl trembled violently, curling in tighter yet, trying desperately to keep hold of the last warmth she would ever feel. Her memories would fade in time—the sun of her world dispersing amongst the fog of millennia. She was not the first he had carried; she would not be the last. 

Again the boat rocked, this time from the shifting of the man beside him. He was without a single solitary doubt the strangest man the oarsman had ever seen. For over thirty-thousand years he had tended his vessel—ferrying the dead from the dismal shores to an impossibly worse prison; never in his millennia of service to the Authority had he ever met such a peculiar passenger. His skin was solid, life like but lifeless all at once. He was pale and gaunt, garbed in tattered rags tied about his sharp hips. He seemed to bear a thin crust of flaking blood; his wrists and ankles hosted truly gruesome gashes and a puncture between his ribs still leaked blood. All of that was mightily peculiar and entirely unprecedented. Yet what was strangest of all was not his physical form nor his grievous injuries: his most disconcerting feature was his unnaturally bright _ smile _ . The man looked as if he had been stampeded to death and then subsequently torn apart by feral dogs. But through all of it—he _ smiled _. Although, for all the man’s strangeness, he was no true mystery. The oarsman had known he would come, had been reminded not long before by the cackling of those damned Harpies. Oh, how they had howled when the Regent had come with news of Yeshua’s death. Finally, finally they would have their promised toy. The oarsman grimaced as the fog began to part—the shadowed gates of the dead peeking out from behind the mist.

Beside him, Yeshua sighed. The battered man shuffled forward, careful not to rock the boat once again and add to the child’s terror. He came to rest beside the girl, setting himself down on the soggy bench with a pained huff. Yeshua’s gentle fingers brushed over her brow and coaxed open her tightly clenched eyes. At the sight of him, bloodied and gaunt—the child coiled and slunk away. Yeshua laughed softly and smiled with such fierce warmth that the oarsman, who had never known a world without the hopeless pallor of the dead, felt for the first time content. 

“Fear not little one—this place is not the end; you shall see my father’s house yet.” It was said with such powerful certainty that for a single fleeting moment, the oarsman managed to believe him. The girl unwound slightly, peeking out from beneath a mop of scraggly brown hair. Her doe-like eyes shone with hope and doubt, blinking up at the strange man with the kind voice.

“Your father?”, the girl whispered, flinching only slightly when Yeshua reached out to ruffle her hair.

“Elohim, Lord of all, creator of all that is bright and good—enemy of evil,” Yeshua whispered back. “I shall sit at his right hand and welcome all the righteous to the Kingdom of Heaven.”

With his words, the oarsman’s strange joy died. _ Oh, this poor man, how cruel can a father truly be—even if the son was unwanted _ ? It was not worth the effort to question the Regent’s cruelty: Metatron had been a brash and vengeful man in life; his nature had not changed with his elevation to the ranks of the _ bene elim _. He would not take kindly to that which threatened his rule. A trueborn son of the Authority would not long endure if Metatron were as intelligent as he was sadistic; alas—Metatron was a brute. Yeshua’s torture at the hands of the mortals was only the beginning: the torment that awaited him would be eternal. 

For the first time since she had stumbled aboard, guided by the shadowy figure of her Death, the girl smiled. It tore at his very being to witness such hope when he knew well that there was none to be found.

The grind of sand against the boat’s ancient hull jarred him from his misery. The gate of the dead sat far up the winding stony slope, shrouded in malicious black smoke. The boat jostled slightly as Yeshua lowered the girl down over the edge—waving her onward to wait at the base of the steps.

Yeshua turned to the oarsman and for the first time he realized just how young the man had been: he was barely even thirty, a man in his prime, when he had been whipped through the streets of Jerusalem. His skin was sallow and yellowing, but his eyes, oh how his eyes seemed to glitter like the multitude of lights suspended in the firmament. Here stood the Son of God—the Messiah of the Zealots. In the sag of his tormented features the oarsman saw what had been lost, no—what had been _ stolen _: a faithful friend, a passionate teacher, a precious son, and a beloved man. 

“Thank you my friend, go in peace. I must be about my father’s business.”

It was all the oarsman could do to nod briskly, choked by the sorrow of this man betrayed—this faithful son denied. He pulled at the oars, the familiar task soothing his roiling guilt. It had been he who had delivered Yeshua to his sentence. As he pulled and pulled the fog once again swept in, the gate of the dead disappearing once more. As the last of the cursed shore evaporated, the delighted shrieks of the harpies echoed mournfully over the dark waters. For the first time in thirty-thousand years—the oarsman wept.

***** 

Yeshua watched the boat calmly as it faded from view. It was an immensely difficult task to remain joyous in this realm of shadow and flame. His feet ached and left a steady line of blood behind, turning the gray ash a mottled crimson. The wound to his side, where a centurion’s spear of mercy had ended his anguish in the mortal world, leaked an odd kind of light liquid—almost more water than blood. And his hands, oh Father how his hands burned. But still he marched on, doing his best to reassure the poor soul that awaited him at the base of the stairs. 

She was such a little thing—tremulous and terrified. She took his bloodied hand eagerly, oblivious to the open wounds that adorned them. Yeshua cringed at the pressure but made no complaint: he simply could not allow an innocent youth to brave the shadow alone.

One agonizing step at a time, Yeshua and the girl ascended the serpentine walk. The steps seemed to be cut from the blackness of the world itself—reflecting none of the little light that existed in this infernal place. Overhead a distant thrum could be heard. _ Angels _ , Yeshua assured himself, _ they must be Angels _. 

“What is your father’s house like?”, the girl asked tentatively. She was a small child, thin and wiry. To her chest she clutched a woolen ball. He imagined it was of little comfort here. 

“Shining and glorious, little one. You shall see it soon enough.” He knew that this place was not his father’s kingdom. No, this was the netherworld: the prison of those damned by Original Sin. But soon their torment would be finished, for he was about his Father’s business and would see them liberated. “What is your name, child?”. 

“Hatikva, my name is Hatikva,” the girl answered, blinking owlishly up at him from no higher than his waist. He smiled sadly at the girl, so young to walk through such a place. He guided her on, up and up the switchbacks and turns of the winding path. Her small legs, shrouded in that same odd grayish glow as the oarsman, were no match for the journey. She slowed soon enough to an exhausted stop—leaning heavily against his knee. 

“Would you mind if I carried you, little Hatikva?” he asked gently, brushing back her tangled hair from where it had fallen over her eyes. She nodded blearily and acquiesced to his waiting arms. Yeshua hoisted her up to his hip and continued on up the slope. She was light in his arms, lighter than she should have been. _ It was starvation that took her, poor thing _. His leaking feet protested and his side seemed nearly to screech; he paid them no mind—continuing on step after onyx step. 

All this suffering had purpose, he knew. He was mankind’s salvation. The physical pain was simple to reconcile; the child in his arms spurred a different kind of sharp pain. _ Is this what it would have been to hold a child of my own? _No, those thoughts were useless now: he had made his choice in the Garden. Her soft breath brushed his soot stained hair and again, he smiled.

The path finally plateaued, giving way to a set of truly striking doors. _ The gates to the world of the dead. _ The gate seemed to stretch upwards indefinitely—disappearing into the curling tendrils of pitch colored smoke. The crashing thunder of wings seemed to materialize in a single moment, shattering the solemn silence of this barren waste. 

Pain, terrible, grueling, unbearable _ pain _ erupted in his very core at the sound. Little Hatikva slipped from his arms; she never made it to the ground—swiped out of the air by a razor sharp talon, and thrown like a ball to another set of horrible claws. The girl’s screams joined the cacophony of screeching and cackling that grated at his mind and forced him to his knees.

“Up now up—oh _ glorious _ Son of God! You cannot be so _ weak _!”, a thousand cruel voices chorused as talons descended, swiping and tearing at his darkened flesh. One claw caught beneath his shoulder and sent him sprawling forward through the opening gates; his skull cracked against the firm ground beyond. His ears roared and his blood pulsed and shot from his gaping wounds.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me,” he spoke the words as a croak—grasping desperately to the strength of the Psalm. The harpies clawed and cackled, spitting and hissing as they flew low and swiped at his prostrate form. “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

“Comfort! You believe He shall aid _ you _ ! That He shall comfort _ you _!”, the beasts frothed at the mouth and vomited black blood as they swept over him. The greatest of them descended with a crash and bore down upon him; its claws flashed and swung, sending him tumbling finally into the world of the dead. 

As he passed the last of the gates his wounds erupted in an unknowable pain. Green, putrid blood seeped out where once his lifesblood had run red. It curdled and boiled where it struck the ground; an ice wind sapped his rotting bones of the last warmth of the mortal world. 

The wraiths above chanted incessantly: “No-name, No-name, give us a turn. Little Yeshua has come out to play! Oh, goody! Thanks to the Authority; praise glorious Metatron!”. The Harpy above him snarled and spat at the others, forcing them to cower away into the shadows. It stalked towards him slowly—a predator toying with its meal. One slender talon reached out for him, sharp as a sword and far quicker. It cut deep into the thin flesh at his scalp, rending and tearing. “See now _ messiah— _ see the _ truth!”. _The beast’s harsh whisper was more a growl than anything human.

The world of ash and shadow and smoke rolled away into the blackness of an eternal abyss. Streaks of bright white light formed and dissipated endlessly in the darkness. It came all at once: the searing pain of the nails as they rent flesh and cracked bone, the weight of the cross upon his aching back, the sting of the Roman whip. His mother, his lonely mother, weeping so pitifully as she clutched his body, barely more than skin and bone, to her heaving breast. Judas, the traitor Judas Iscariot, swaying gently from the branch of an olive tree—pockets overflowing with coins bearing the visage of Caesar. Caiaphas, the high priest of the Great Sanhedrin, prostrated before a winged man whose skin glittered and blazed like the sun.

“See the truth _ bene elim; _ see how He has _betrayed _ you!”. The words echoed through the air, buzzing with an ancient power. The passion in the Garden wheeled and blurred before him: the silhouette of a woman with flowing red hair—so very familiar, so well-loved by him. The beloved disciple weeping for him now in death. 

The cackling of the harpies fled, supplanted by a deeper thrum of cruel ecstasy.

“See what He has done! Know His hate for you!”. The harpies commands, now shrill screams, tore at his being like razors, flaying his blackened and necrotic skin. 

His mother: so young, so fearless. A vessel, a tool for the Regent’s pleasure, and a means for his exile from the Kingdom. 

The twisted joy leapt and bit at the truth: a face, so perfect and so very cruel, split by a vicious grin. An old withered man, sat in a palanquin of glittering crystals, waving vaguely to silence a woman’s cries.

“Know the Regent’s power! Know Metatron’s might!”. The last of his resolve broke and oblivion rushed to meet him. 

The youthful face, lined with malice—glared from the right hand of the withered man. The Regent’s knife, so deftly placed, slashed the old man’s throat; his body was swept away in the wind. Metatron glared a feral snarl as he sat in the gleaming throne, his usurpation complete.

The Harpy’s cackling returned; stronger than before. But as the world of ash and gray returned to his throbbing eyes, the image of a woman flashed. He had not been meant to see it and yet it split the night and drove away the darkness—if only for a moment. With that light came truth and power: he was not so weak as they believed. But he could not fight. Not now—not _ yet _. 

The Harpy’s mirth faded with the beat of her wings; in but a moment, he was entirely alone. His pain had dulled and become a quiet, omnipresent hum. They had been upon him so quickly, all fearsome talons and loathing cries; yet just as quickly it had ceased. He was simply left crippled, the single man of flesh and blood in a world of bodiless spirits. Deep within all his physical agony and the storm of confused betrayal lay a single refrain: “Why, father—why have you forsaken me?”. Why had he feared him so? His only child, handed to that _ dog _Metatron to be disposed of—to be thrown to the mortals and torn apart. There were no tears, he had no more to shed: they had all fallen in the Garden. 

He did not flinch nor lash out when gentle, cool hands caressed his savaged face. Yeshua did not look to see the group that had drawn near—pulled by curiosity or pity. 

“Yeshua, Yeshua my dear boy, can you hear me?”. A voice prodded at his foggy mind, cutting its way through his detached madness. The face that looked down upon him with a rough, wrinkled brow, was one he had not seen since he was a young man.

“John?”, he asked vaguely—his voice more of a groan than the powerful, stirring thing it had once been.

“Yes, my boy, yes it is me.”

The man was John: the baptist of the rolling Jordan; the first of Yeshua’s great teachers. He was the one who had pressed Yeshua beneath the waters of the river and proclaimed him reborn. 

He groaned at the thought of the voice that had spoken through the clouds— calling Yeshua its beloved son.

“Don’t move too much,” an older voice intoned. “You can’t die here, but you can damn well fall apart.”

Leaning over John’s shoulder was a man carrying a twisted staff; squinting at him through bushy eyebrows and a fearsome scowl. 

“Is this the one you’ve been harping about, John? The _ Son of God _ coming to save us all from this pit?”, the bearded man grunted. “Not as shiny as _ bene elim _ usually are.”

“Yes, Moses,” John sighed as he looked over his tattered clothes and rotted skin. He poked at a wound on his arm carefully and the flesh simply fell away. John grimaced, and turned to Moses. “This is Yeshua the Nazarene—though it seems the Authority hates him just as much as he does the rest of us.”

Moses snorted and rapt John on the shin with his stick. “Shouldn’t have given us hope. Metatron will just make more visits now; those are always a pleasure.” The ancient, bearded man hobbled off into the shadow and ash of their prison— muttering and grunting as he went. 

John sighed miserably and stared intently at the ground just beyond where Yeshua lay. “I can’t move you, Yeshua. You’ll fall apart if I try and you won’t heal down here; there’s nothing I can do for you.'' His voice was brittle and weary as he spoke—and so very hopeless. 

Yeshua moaned softly and lay still: there was nothing else to do. John spoke softly for a time, telling him who he had met; what companions had come down before Yeshua. 

He did not listen: alternating between abject despair and desperately grasping for that single moment of reprieve when he had felt his entire being vibrate as it had when he performed miracles. 

The Harpies passed overhead, some stopping to torment him, others simply spitting and hissing as they flew. Spirits passed as well, taking little notice of the decrepit corpse—laying silently amongst the ash. 

Years passed and Yeshua never moved. Every moment, every Harpy, every spirit passing, his rage simmered and cooled. He turned bitter and spiteful: filled with hate and an unquenchable lust for vengeance. Most of all he craved _ power _ —the power he knew lay within his festering blood. _ He _ had been the one destined to sit at the right hand of his Father, not _ Metatron _ . He had bled for it and died for it. It was _ his. _ It _ would _be his.

When once more a Harpy came spiraling down from the black sky, intent on picking at what was left of his body—it happened: the woman of blinding light stood before him in his mind, the same that had begged his father not to send him away, the same woman that had driven the great Harpy off years ago. He reached out to her proffered hand and grasped it. 

His blood sang with power, flowing once more as it had in life—free and crimson as the dawn. Yeshua felt that same haze he had entered as he turned the water into wine, the same trance he had felt as he walked across water and healed the leper. Around him the air burned; golden particles collected and fractured and flowed so brightly that the spirits, long condemned to darkness, cringed away. 

Two-thousand years later, experimental theologians would see the same golden swirls and name it _ Dust _ . While in another world, scientists like Mary Malone would call them _ Shadows _. 

At that moment of realization, as the one and only-begotten son of the master of the Angels claimed what had been stolen from him—those swirling motes of Dust seemed to ignite and swell like a living flame.

The Harpy was seized about the throat by a gauntlet of smoldering Dust and thrown bodily into the ancient edifice of the gates of the dead. The beast crumpled and gasped and died. The world of the dead stopped: no spirit walked drearily about the waste, no Harpy pestered their prey. In that world deep silence, the one who had once been the mortal man Yeshua rose. He stalked between the silent spirits, more a wraith than their weak, passive forms. He spoke not a word as he cut his way between them— but the message was clear: it was finished, he was leaving the world of the dead; all those who dared to defy the Authority, who dared to stand against the Regent, were welcome to join him and be subjects in his new vengeful court.

The Harpies dared not pursue him: he was greater than they were. At the very least they respected strength. Only the Harpy No-Name, who would one day bear a different epithet, pursued the small stream of spirits. She watched as they haunted the caverns of her world; as they passed the depths of the place of terror and darkness that terrified even the Harpies, and she watched as the impossible became real. 

The being no-longer-Yeshua stretched out his decayed hands, streaming blood that boiled upon the onyx rock, and wrenched the fabric of the worlds apart. For the first time in thirty-thousand years—the light of a true sun poured into the world of the dead. 

The spirits gasped and sobbed and praised their new lord’s name; that is what this no-longer-the-man-Yeshua was. He had become their king as the Authority had never been; as Metatron dreamt of being. This new being, born from the betrayed-man-Yeshua, looked back only once before he stepped through the breach and disappeared into the light of another world.

******

The sunlight caressed his skin like an old lover—bathing him in its warm brilliance. _ Warmth_, oh how he had missed its touch. 

As he passed fully through the window, shimmering in the air of this new world, his flesh fell away. It did not flake nor slough as it had in the world of the dead; rather, it melted_ . _ His mortal flesh streamed away and in its place came the shining brilliance of Heaven—the light, which to those not of the _ bene elim, _ seemed to glow from an unknown star. 

His wounds sealed and dissolved, forgotten memories—lost to time. Only those he carried into the world of the dead remained, and even those were muted spots of black on his gleaming visage.

Others followed him: the weak and useless dissipated into clouds of golden Dust, carried away by the wind; the able, the strong, the enduring—they remained. Just as he had, they shed the gray mist of the dead and embraced the blazing light of Heaven. A new Heaven. _ His _Heaven. They would be his knights, his warriors, the first of many. These vengeful few would wield blades in his name and cut down those who had wronged him. 

A little distance away from the window, sealing itself once again without his constant focus, stood a figure. He blazed with the light of the _ bene elim _and carried a shimmering blade of black steel, shrouded in a petulant cloud of Dust. He floated gently through the calm air; a soft breeze ruffled his flowing golden hair. He stopped before this newly made lord and knelt—not once looking from his king’s eyes.

“Who are you, _ bene elim_?” the king asked, his voice smooth as the finest silk and deeper than all the oceans in all the worlds. 

The Angel smiled, lay his blade across his knee and spoke, “Gabriel.” 


	2. Terror in the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyra Silvertounge's world, ten years after Lord Asriel's war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited and re-uploaded 7/13/2020

(_Aurora Borealis _by Michael Creese)

“The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: 

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep 

Moans round with many voices.”

\- _ Ulysses, _Alfred Lord Tennyson

**2006 C.E**

The white surf rolled and churned; bubbled and sprayed; darkened and shone beneath the brilliant lights of the northern sky. Faint shadows of European haddock darted about below the rough waves—surging and slowing in tune with the sea. They moved gracefully and with little fear; it had been weeks since a fishing vessel had passed through these parts. 

No fisherman would dare to brave waters so near Svalbard, the realm of the  _ panserbjorne _ , not since the first stirrings of trouble. It was conventional wisdom to steer clear of the armored bears in normal times; a death sentence to do anything else in a time of war. While King Iorek Byrnison had made no formal declaration, the tension was palpable: the bears of Svalbard were on the brink of civil war. The most perturbing aspect of the conflict was that no one, not even the King, knew why. None of the scholars at Oxford; the professors in Berlin; the clergy in Geneva—even the witches of the north could not understand the swift turn in the bear-king’s court. 

_ Madness, utter and complete madness _ . Kaisa grumbled as he dipped his wing and swiped at the fleeing minnows, just out of reach. Iorek, of course, had been perfectly sane when Serafina Pekkala’s faithful dæmon swept into the icy halls of the implacable king’s court. It was the  _ other  _ so-called king that had necessitated a visit on behalf of his witch. 

Not since the blighted reign of Iofur Rackinson had the armored bears seemed so strangely human. Strangest of all was that the false king was Iorek’s own nephew, who, by all accounts, had been fiercely loyal to his uncle. Yet one day, for whatever reason, the young and strapping bear had declared himself King of Svalbard and taken three hundred bears with him into the blinding winds of a summer squall. There had been no violence; that only made the affair all the more peculiar. Armored bears were loyal creatures, not prone to the machinations of human politics; they did not fear bloodshed in war. By all accounts, Arnvid Grussnison was acting like a human; yet bears still followed him. It was an unsolvable puzzle—even with all the wisdom of over three-hundred years of life.

Iorek’s eyes had been unreadable as they had ever been: deep, black and powerful. Set atop his stern throne of ice, crafted beautifully by his own two hulking paws—he had been the very image of the bear-kings of legend. His dull and scratched armor spoke of a lifetime of battle, free of the adornments and ostentatious bobbles that had so characterized Rackinson’s reign. 

Despite it all, his court was nearly deserted. Only the eldest and most loyal of the  _ panserbjorne _ remained—sitting proudly at the sides of their lord’s throne. The others had either betrayed Iorek and gone with the rebellious Arnvid, or were set to patrol the wastes of Svalbard for their lurking foe. One thing had become entirely obvious when Kaisa had drawn near: the king had grown old. It had been only ten years since the closing of the doorways and yet Iorek seemed to have gained half a century. It was well known that  _ panserbjorne _ lived shorter lives than men, but Iorek was middle-aged during his duel with Iofur Rackinson—he should not seem so elderly. The weight of the crown and his scars of war sat heavily upon the old bear. His duty had clawed away at him and his blood’s betrayal had rattled him, though he fought desperately to master his pain, as he had once told Lyra Silvertounge to do. But reality paid no mind to Iorek’s stubbornness; his time left could be counted on one hand—so much he had told Kaisa. 

It was yet another catastrophe waiting to happen: Iorek’s son and heir was young and learning; he could not stand against the gathering strength of Arnvid Grussnison; so old Iorek Byrnsion humbled himself and requested the aid of an old friend. Kaisa could offer no immediate assurance: the witches were not prepared to wage war. 

Kaisa bristled in the salty spray, fanning out his feathers and honking an answer to a distant gull. The sun had long ago passed beneath the horizon, but the sky remained ethereally lit. A vast multitude of distant stars twinkled and glowed in the darkened sky, warring with the moon’s dull brilliance for dominance of the night. 

_ Yet neither have a claim to speak of, _ the goose dæmon mused as he twisted and wheeled about to catch a glimpse of the streaming elegance of the lights. Far above, in a region of the firmament barred to all but Angels, the  _ aurora borealis _ blazed in a symphony of kaleidoscopic color. Its beauty was dazzling; its eternal song enchanting— even to one so used to its call.  _ But _ , Kaisa worried,  _ there is something different in them.  _ He swung about to look away from the lights, peering into the black depths of the Great Northern Ocean.  _ The lights are changing _ . 

He reached out fearfully for the essential bond that connected his being to Serafina’s, finding it intact and undiminished. He sighed, an odd noise to hear from a goose, and sunk into the warmth of the connection. It was muted in the strange way that it would be when his witch slept without him. He felt her grasp weakly at the bond as he prodded.  _ She’s dreaming, then. Most likely visiting the others. _

It was still such a strange feeling: to remain awake while one’s other half slumbered. Even after centuries of practice, the omnipresent sense of wrongness; the galling unease—never left a witch. He could not imagine what it felt like for Kirjava: Who had not existed outside the boy’s body until their adventure in the world beyond this. He snorted and shook his feathered head wearily. 

It was an unsettling thing to be so relieved that their connection remained inviolate. Never in their three hundred or so years together had either of them spared a thought for the possibility of true separation. That had all changed with Bolvangar—with the silver guillotine and that horrid room filled with the trembling dæmon’s of severed children. Not even then had it been a true threat to a grown witch; certainly not to a witch queen. It had taken until years after Asriel’s war for that fear to rock the hearts of all witches. 

A sickness fell upon the witches of Lake Visha. It began as fatigue and a slight cough—nothing to worry over. By the end, usually a matter of weeks, the witch was dead. Far worse was what happened to the dæmon. While the witch was claimed by Yambe-Akka: the dæmon remained. 

The first case had sent the Witches of Lake Visha into a panic, scrambling to find a cure. None had been found in the six years since the plague emerged, although an excruciatingly painful ritual to release the dæmon from the mortal world had been devised. The pain seemed well worth it if one heard the keening cry of a dæmon without their other half. 

The accursed illness was highly contagious and spread ruthlessly through the Visha clan. Only a few witches remained now, scattered to the other clans after the death of their Queen, Frida Kamainen, four years earlier. All ten of the remaining clans had entered a terrified state of isolation. Not a single loyal witch had left Lake Enara in six long years and none of the other clans were permitted entry. All business with the outside world was conducted via dæmon—why Kaisa had taken Serafina Pekkala’s place in treating with Iorek Byrnison.

The world was shifting and changing in ways the witches did not understand. It was all very disconcerting. The bears were acting strangely; the witches lived in constant fear of disease; the magisterium was embroiled in a power struggle; the Northern Lights were fading. The terrible familiarity of it all whispered in the heart of each Witch Queen; they had seen similar signs in the past—before Lord Asriel’s war. 

Something was coming. Kaisa shivered and latched onto the bond once more. He glanced up at the failing streams of light one last time and beat his wings—sailing on through the damp chill of an arctic night.

  
  


*********************** 

The curling mists of the dream world twisted and twirled across her bare skin in the soft caress of a familiar lover. She padded soundlessly through the ghost like grasses that scratched at her thighs. The sky above was consumed by a dense fog of roiling white clouds. They would break occasionally—offering a glimpse of magenta; scarlet; carnelian; a thousand different combinations of unnatural colors. 

Her pale hair fell freely about her shoulders and rolled down her back in gentle curls. Serafina Pekkala’s pale skin, strangely unmarked by centuries of long life, reflected the dim light faintly. 

The familiar pull at her navel called her to her purpose: the only way she could see what she must in a world made unsafe for her and her sisters. Serafina Pekkala ran her graceful fingers over the course ends of the waving grass, listening intently to the murmuring of the universe. Voices whispered and shouted from days long past: speaking of joy, hope, fear and pain. 

The faint vision of a young witch and a gyptian man swept by in the evanescent stream of consciousness—the pale face of a baby boy tearing at the queen’s heart. She swept the past aside with a huff and reached for the hum of a different time. 

Garbled noises and voices assailed her as she sifted through days yet to come. The images Serafina Pekkala managed to divine were distorted and watery. The future was never cooperative when one attempted to learn its mysteries. Reality was always in motion and prophecy was terribly unreliable. 

She pushed on, her mind slipping through the portents of the future and reaching for the glimmering images of the present. Serafina felt the wonderfully familiar network of spiritual alleyways and lines that connected her being to all living things. In the deepest corners of her soul—she could feel the flow of Dust.

The witch queen reached for the nearest connection, glittering and flashing as her dream hands gripped the flowing cord. Her dignified shoulders slumped with the sensation, giving herself over to the call of her sisters. Brief flashes of her friends and subjects flitted before her eyes. All were safe; most were happy; none were in mortal peril.  _ Good _ , she thought with a sigh,  _ that's a good start _ . 

It had been a trying six years since she issued her much grumbled over edict: confining the witches of her clan to their northern homeland and barring all outside visitors. There had even been a short-lived rebellion in her discontented court. It had lasted less than a day and ended with the plotters of the coup d'état simply slipping past the sentries in the dead of night. They hadn't lasted more than a week before they had flown too close to Lake Visha and were quickly decimated by the plague. The whole debacle had done nothing but reinforce Serafina Pekkala’s conviction that her course was the right one.  _ A necessary thing, but taxing all the same _ . 

The restriction had at least stopped her from waging a war of bloody retribution against the Lake Umolese clan for Yalena Pahzets’ attempt on Lyra Silvertounge’s life. It had, rather embarrassingly, taken a year for the news of the failed assassination to reach her ears. Her fury had been terrible and it had taken a long string of correspondence between the two for her wrath to abate. Lyra had not wanted  _ another _ war fought on her behalf. 

Serafina was simply relieved that Iorek Byrnison had not been told of the affair. Nothing, not even Lyra herself, could have stopped the bear-king from extracting a hefty price.

_ Oh, my dear Iorek, what has become of your domain? _ The news of intra-court strife on Svalbard had been a terrible shock: the armored bears were not supposed to act with the low cunning and selfishness of humans. Arnvid Grussnison’s declaration of kingship had perplexed Serafina and sent the world to whispering of a grand new war in the north. 

She had met the traitor once—when he was only slightly taller than she and still clinging to his mother's ivory flank. The lad had practically venerated Iorek and followed him as if he were the king’s own dæmon. Of course, it had been an incredibly brief acquaintance; not nearly enough to judge the bear’s deeper character. 

She had not had the chance to return to Svalbard since the end of Lord Asriel’s rebellion. The disease had fallen upon them too soon and the restrictions ended any chance of her seeing her old comrade in arms. 

She had felt Kaisa’s insistent pull on their bond when she first entered the dream world—she would have more answers soon enough.

Serafina waded through the crowding mists, slipping past the glowing threads connecting her to the gyptians. The hollow, elderly face of Farder Coram shone through the fog—his dӕmon Sophonax curled on his lap.  _ So old, my love! Has it truly been so long? _ It was a queer thing for a witch: to watch lovers hunch and decay; to watch sons do the same after them, and yet the witch remains eternally youthful.  _ To live in terms of centuries rather than decades is a blessing and a curse.  _ Serafina turned away quickly; it would not do to dwell on what could not be changed. 

She pushed on, brushing past glimpses of Tartars and Muscovites; scholars and priests; kings and peasants—searching for a head of golden brown hair and a fiery soul. Finally, she stumbled upon the blazing connection between herself and Lyra Silvertounge. 

Reaching forward and grasping the line, the dream world itself seemed to thrum with joy. The vision came clearly: two young women lounging sedately on a cobbled roof; their two dæmons darting back and forth above them. The rust tinted pine-marten curled his body around the other’s neck, nipping at the fox dæmon’s black tipped ears. The fox’s tail swished back and forth as it struggled—fur glimmering with a moon reflected fire. 

The two women paid no mind to the struggle waged above them. Both were content to lay in silence, periodically pointing out some constellation or planet that appeared especially bright in the night sky above Oxford. 

Lyra Belacqua, called Silvertongue by those who understood its meaning—was a truly gorgeous young woman. She had inherited all of her mother’s natural grace: her dark blonde hair braided neatly down her back; pale blue eyes alight with fierce intelligence. Lyra had also inherited  _ none _ of her mother’s devious patience. She was incredibly cunning, of course, hence the title  _ Silvertongue _ , but she had no interest in paying false compliments and even less ability to wield her beauty as a weapon. 

Her greatest strength was undoubtedly her mind. Even as a naive girl of eleven, when Serafina Pekkala had first sent Kaisa to speak with her—Lyra Belacqua had possessed a sharp mind and an even sharper tongue. She had only bloomed in the decade since her return to Oxford, guided by an older woman on the faculty of St. Sophia’s College. Her future would, doubtless, be as interesting as her past.

The girl beside Lyra was more of a mystery to Serafina. She knew only the girl’s name—Elizabeth Typhenon—and that her devotion to Lyra was true. She had prodded about in the dream world and sent Kaisa to investigate when the girl suddenly appeared in her visions only months after Yalena Pahzets’ failed plot. All Kaisa had returned with was Lyra’s assurances that she was healthy, safe, and happy. Serafina was wary but satisfied and had never been given any true reason to doubt the mysterious girl. 

Like Lyra, Elizabeth Typhenon was positively dazzling. Her onyx black hair and tanned skin held a great allure—made only more prominent by her dark gray eyes that seemed nearly black in the moonlight. But where Lyra’s beauty was offset by here standoffishness, Elizabeth’s seemed wonderfully forbidding. Serafina had witnessed the girl’s skill for manipulating weak men and could admit to being impressed. The two of them were certainly an  _ interesting _ pair at the very least.

The two wrestling dæmon’s swayed precariously on the sloped roof, stumbling to and fro before finally tipping over and rolling in a blur of fur and claws to land with a dull thud against Lyra’s outstretched arm. Lyra picked Pantalaimon out of the tangle by the fur of his short, pine-marten neck—setting him down upon her stomach as he tried in vain to swipe at the chittering fox. 

Serafina Pekkala smiled fondly as Lyra Silvertounge prodded at the other girl with her foot, saying something inaudible and motioning to the small red door leading out onto the roof. The other girl sighed as she scooped her squirming fox dæmon into her arms by his pale furred stomach and came laboriously to her feet. The two laughed at some unknown jest as Lyra unlocked the door with a dull bronze key—stooping below the low set ceiling and disappearing from Serafina Pekkala’s sight. 

The vision evaporated in a thin plume of evanescent fog as the door swung shut. Serafina waved the haze from her eyes and ran her hands along the bright cords, following the dimmest of the bunch to a far off corner of the dream world. The swirling clouds above grew darker and the air took on a faintly burnt scent; the fine hairs along her extremities stood on end as a damp chill swept through where once there had been life and warmth; the world warped and became muddled and confused. Distant voices murmured—muffled strangely as if they spoke from underwater. The once brilliant light of the connections was faint, barely glowing in the gloom. 

These connections were distant: not dead, no, but obstructed. Each led to a different shade, a confused image of what could possibly be a person. One, however, was different. This cord burned nearly as brightly as the others—far outshining the dim and dull connections around it. Serafina Pekkala traced its curving path with the tips of her fingers; her breath formed misshapen plumes in the dank air. 

At its end the image of a woman dressed in some sort of stark white cloak moved about a cluttered desk; boxes of what Serafina Pekkala assumed to be the tools of an experimental theologian beeped and flashed. A black bird waddled about on the edge of the desk, poking at different boxes and papers with his yellow beak.  _ An Alpine Chough _ , Serafina Pekkala remembered faintly. 

Dr. Mary Malone was the one person who Serafina Pekkala could see clearly through the barrier between worlds. Her black hair, as it often tended to be, was tied haphazardly behind her head—dark tendrils breaking free and falling into her eyes. Mary Malone looked up suddenly and spoke to someone Serafina could not see; the noise was twisted and incomprehensible, more of a faint buzz than useful speech. 

A slightly taller woman with pale skin and hair of a peculiar mud like color came around the corner of the cluttered desk. The woman moved her arms excitedly as she spoke, unable to see the squawking bird she nearly flung from the table with her frantic gestures. The witch Queen watched curiously as the two experimental theologians worked: tapping a kind of flat box with smaller boxes of painted letters and numbers. 

“They were not called experimental theologians in the boy’s world, were they?” she mused absently, tapping at the edge of the shimmering image. 

Mary Malone’s fingers stopped suddenly, her head snapped up, and she blinked wide-eyed at what to her was empty space. Serafina smiled brightly and laughed— though the sound didn’t seem to carry over. It had happened before, these moments of breakthrough, when one would finally hear the other speaking across the divide. Mary Malone was no witch and therefore did not have centuries to master her control of the world of dreams—but she did manage to enter its misty halls sometimes. Serafina was unsure as to how much Mary could actually discern; she was at least sure that Mary could see her most of the time if no one else. 

_ How unfortunate _ , she thought,  _ that Dr. Malone has not seen fit to teach him the art. _ She would have instructed Lyra if the travel to do so would not put her clan at risk. It was the least they could do for the pair; they had, after all, sacrificed one another for the greater good. 

With the thought of the boy—the world of dreams once again shifted around her; Mary Malone’s bright connection flickered out. The mist turned to a swirling wind of foul smelling smoke as her spiritual being ground against the barrier separating worlds. 

The thread she followed pulsed with a dim light, producing only a short, weak glow. She could discern no clear images in the oppressive blackness of the void. Serafina shuddered against the biting cold—an odd sensation for a witch born to the ice winds of the north. She muttered softly; the ancient ritual incantations of her people gave her the strength to push on. The roiling smog abated slightly and the delicate cord of thought glowed faintly in the darkness.

She had never managed to fully glimpse the boy in the decade since they had parted for the last time. Serafina only ever gleaned quick bursts of emotions and muddled thoughts when she pressed with all her considerable strength.  _ I was never close with him. I do not have fond memories to draw upon. _ She would never admit, even to herself, that there was fear as well. She had not dared to look into the boy’s eyes when she had known him; the fire there burned too brightly.  _ Ruta Skadi had not been wrong: he was always much like Lord Asriel. _

Serafina Pekkala drew herself up and called upon all the confidence of a monarch well-used to mastering her own base emotions. She grasped the dull connection and pressed her being against the solid barrier—long healed from the wounds of  _ Ӕsahættr. _

The vision was murky and incomprehensible: A thousand voices spoke at once, saying nothing; a thousand images flashed at once, showing nothing. Serafina Pekkala grit her teeth and heaved with her last reserves of strength. The world shifted and trembled. The suffocating smoke froze and the frigid winds ceased. In a single blinding moment—it happened: she saw him clearly, not as the boy she remembered, but as the man he had become. 

He was...smaller than she had imagined. He certainly was not physically short: He was of a decent, if average, height. Something had changed. Some fundamental component had been torn away and the effect was galling.  _ Could this truly be William Parry: bearer of the subtle knife, slayer of Angels, and begrudging friend to bear-kings? _

Serafina would not have been able to say if not for his eyes. Those, at least, were familiar. Their ominous depths reflected the licking flames of a being forged in the crucible of war—tempered by suffering and quenched by loss. Yet, even in their familiarity, they were changed. 

He seemed more broken now than determined, cut adrift from the purpose that had once driven him ceaselessly onward. She could see the truth within him that his counterpart so masterfully avoided: Part of this man’s soul was missing—forever severed and locked away. That which remained seemed so very brittle, battered by unexpected hardships. The stumps of the missing digits on his left hand seemed more a disability than the proud scars of battle they had once been. His very being seemed to have faded with the passing of the years—shrinking and curling in on itself over and over again. 

Will Parry scratched distractedly at the tip of his narrow nose, swiping his matted black hair off his scrunched brow. Serafina Pekkala blinked: once, twice, a third time and finally set to staring. 

She had not realized he had been doing anything—so lost she had been in her intense examination. The boy-now-a-man sat hunched over a parchment strewn desk, squinting intently at a dusty tome. He scribbled notes occasionally in a booklet bound with odd spirals of flimsy metal. 

He seemed so disconcertingly normal: there was no indication at all that this was the man who had faced down legions of Angels at the age of twelve. 

The single abnormality in the scene was the cat curled at his feet. She huffed softly as she napped—scratching absently at her ear with a deft claw. Kirjava was largely unchanged from the day she had come into being. Her sleek coat of shimmering dark hair reflected the over-bright desk lamp’s harsh glare quite beautifully. Her ears flicked at the brush of Will’s shin against her sloped back. The dæmon cracked one black eye open to glare lazily at a shelf behind Will’s wheeled chair. She mumbled something to the man and closed her eyes once more. 

Will only looked up for a moment, but it was enough to draw Serafina Pekkala’s interest. The shelf in question played host to a number of beige boxes, each labeled in a looping script too difficult to discern from a distance. It took no more than a moment for her to find what had irritated the cat dæmon. 

Atop the shelf sat a long rectangular box wrapped in an adhesive device. Serafina did not know what was in the box—only that it was undeniably potent. The surrounding air seemed to shimmer faintly. It was no surprise that the dæmon had sensed it when her human had not: they were, of course, more attuned to such things. 

The object did not seem to be living; why would it be surrounded by Dust? There were only two objects that Serafina Pekkala had observed before that behaved similarly: Lyra Silvertounge’s alethiometer and the subtle knife—neither of which could possibly be in a Will Parry’s office, given that the knife had been destroyed and no alethiometer existed in his world. 

Serafina Pekkala moved cautiously closer through the wispy tendrils of black smoke. Whatever object lay concealed upon the shelf possessed a powerful allure. Its spiraling aura whispered soft words of temptation. It was a terribly intoxicating feeling: to be so enthralled by the mysterious siren’s pull. 

Fantasies from more youthful days returned to her with the promise of power. The shimmering mirage wound its way about her heart—calling forth the hidden depths of her soul. 

The cries of the babe she had birthed, loved and lost flayed her of the armor of an aged Queen. Her heart raced in her bosom and her ears roared with heady ecstasy and biting pain. Her emerald eyes, always so deep and wise—were blown wide like a child in wonderment. Whatever this  _ thing _ was, it offered Serafina Pekkala her most closely guarded desire: it promised the return of that which had been taken before its time.

With trembling fingers, she reached for the glittering halo. In her mind she knew that she could not touch it—not through the unbroken boundary. But her soul keened for its vow. If she could reach out; take it in hand—all would be made right. In its unwavering grasp she was no greater than a babe. She could feel the warmth of her little boy’s swaddle as truly as she could sense the bond between her being and Kaisa’s. 

Serafina Pekkala, Queen of the witches of Lake Enara, reached out and against all the laws and truths of her reality—grasped an object in another world.

At that moment of abject shock, as Serafina Pekkala felt the weight of the container in her hands, the world of dreams lurched. The surrounding image spun and trembled. Colors flashed brilliantly and the lights of the office seemed to glow with all the vitality of the aurora. Yet for all the vision's intensity—the man in the chair never once looked up; his dæmon, curled at his feet, never cracked a furred eyelid. They could not see what had happened; had not taken notice of her seemingly solid presence in their world. 

At the moment of frightful realization—the box evaporated in a plume of noxious onyx smoke; the rest of the vision fled with it. Serafina had only a fleeting juncture to understand: the box had been an illusion; a cleverly laid trap. She had fallen for the bait quite dutifully. 

As the last of the vision disintegrated—the dream world itself seemed to fracture and blur. 

She was seized, rather suddenly, by the sensation of being dragged downward by her navel. The shrouded floor of the dreamscape ruptured beneath her and putrid air, smelling of ash and decay, rose to meet her. The veil of smoke and shadow that seized her as she fell appeared, very nearly, to be cut from the midnight sky. 

She was dragged under bodily—descending rapidly and with ever-increasing speed, deeper and deeper into the crushing blackness. All around her the shadows seemed to shriek: Voices from the past, present and future melded together in an incomprehensible howl. The atmosphere of the void was frigid and unyielding. It pressed upon her mind with an impossible weight— scratching and tearing, demanding supplication. 

“Kaisa—” she gasped weakly. The words caught in her throat as the smoke forced its way through and scorched her lungs. She blinked hard and quick, trying desperately to clear her eyes of the tears that occluded her vision. 

_ Yambe-Akka, _ she pleaded with a straining thought,  _ take me from this place; bring me into your mercy _ . 

Her plea, much to her startled terror, was not met with silence. Peals of mocking laughter echoed off invisible walls and the void thrummed with cruel mirth. She quailed at the sound, something she had not done since girlhood—and gave into panic. 

She clenched her eyes tightly against the horror of the void, where twin eyes hung suspended—glaring with a harsh glint of malicious glee in their gray depths. The eyes burned in the darkness, radiating a sudden, scalding heat. 

Serafina Pekkala’s throat spasmed and clenched and opened no more. She choked and spluttered—grasping desperately at her flushed neck. Her once elegant fingernails tore deep lines of flesh from her uncooperative throat. Beads and streams of hot red blood leaked and ran down her bare chest. Through all of her horror, all of her galling agony—the eyes blazed and the laughter rebounded. 

Just as suddenly as it had begun, her torment ceased, though her ordeal was far from complete. In a flash of blinding white light the mocking eyes were turned to ash; the laughter sputtered and died. She squirmed against the harsh radiance of whatever it was that had freed her. 

She witnessed her savior for only a moment: A vague silhouette stood amid the brilliant glow, shrouded by a hooded cloak of deep azure fabric; their face concealed by shifting shadows. The cloak shifted and billowed, as if in a gentle breeze; its material glinted and flashed. It was a well-worn garment, but worthy of monarchs in quality. 

The figure seemed to peer at her hunched form—gentle but stern. The apparition must have come to one conclusion or another, for it ceased its inspection and stepped back into the fierce radiance of the light. In another blink of the witch Queen’s emerald eyes—it was gone. 

With the figure’s passing the light blazed brighter before—forcing Serafina Pekkala to look away and clench her eyes. In the next breath it dimmed and in its place came a rolling heat. 

It was a peculiar sensation: Irritating but not painful. The heat seemed to ebb and flow like the waves of the oceans. 

A minute later it was joined by a sound: A clang of steel on steel. It echoed rhythmically and offered a distant sort of comfort. 

The light had waned to a dim glow—soft enough for Serafina to look about the empty expanse without pain. There was nothing at all: No visions, no mist, no noxious fumes—only the vast plain of stark nothingness; the cloying heat and the steady hammering of metal. 

It began as a distant hiss—drowned out by the constant clang of steel. Steadily it grew to a soft murmur, gentle and nonthreatening, until, finally, the expanse erupted in a fearsome avalanche of sound and color. 

The sparks and embers of a great fire spat and shot into the empty space. In its grasping tendrils of emerald, azure, onyx and crimson flame—the inferno held a blade, blazing with all the thousand hues of the  _ aurora borealis _ ; its edge ran true and deadly sharp. 

Her eyes, gifted though they were, could not discern its true edge—so fine was this blade. 

It shimmered and gleamed in the kaleidoscopic haze of the flame before it was abruptly drawn from the fire in a hail of bright sparks.

The fire swirled and jumped and glittered. It shot forward, consuming the expanse in its blazing hand—though the flames did not burn her when they came. 

The inferno split and rose in great arching walls on either side of her, closing behind the witch’s back and advancing slowly, guiding her onward. She moved briskly and without question—too weary of the perplexing and often terrifying nature of this place to remain any longer. 

The flames gave way before her and Serafina Pekkala found herself in a wonderfully familiar place. She laughed rather hysterically and spun about in the cold of the arctic winds—the northern lights dancing and glowing above her. 

To the west, a distant range of mountains loomed—titans shadowed by cloud and night; to the east, the Great Northern Ocean crashed and flowed against the jagged coast of ice and rock. 

Even the disdainful shrieks of the far off cliff-ghasts were a welcome relief. 

Svalbard, dominion of the armored bears, was ethereally beautiful in the soft light of the moon. But as she danced and whooped like the silly little girl she had not been in three hundred years—the light began to fade. 

She stood stock still, her breath fanning out as mist in the frigid air, and looked warily to the night sky. One by one, the stars winked out. The aurora grew gray and dull; its great bands of brilliant color dissipated as the moon itself seemed to recede behind a black veil.

For an impossibly long and terrifying moment—Serafina Pekkala believed she had been returned to that place. But the sky began to gleam once more with a different light. 

Above her head, millions of rivers of golden Dust surged in a great flood. The particles sped on through the black sky, disappearing through invisible windows. With the river flowed all the light, life, joy, sorrow, and  _ meaning _ there was in her world. It seemed to tear at her being and stab at the thread that connected her to Kaisa—thirsting for the feast of life sustaining Dust that flowed between them. She stepped back and swatted vaguely as if to bat away a fly. 

A flow of Dust broke off and twisted and danced far above her. It formed, first, the glittering visage of a shattered crown: Its many spikes bent or broken off—leaving jagged stumps behind. The circlet spun swiftly and erratically, shearing off portions of the diadem. For each shard that fell, the streams of Dust flowed with greater speed. As the crown finally disintegrated entirely—the motes became an indistinguishable beam of golden light, streaming ceaselessly out of the world.

In place of the shattered crown, two figures stood before her—wrought entirely of shining Dust. The first lifted its hand slowly; in its fingers it grasped an orb. 

The figure offering the orb was a woman, golden hair rustling gently in the arctic wind. 

The second was clearly a man—strongly built and regal. He reached out with glimmering fingers to grasp the proffered orb and the surrounding flood froze. The Dust hung suspended in the air, trembling in indecision. 

All at once—the particles began to fall gently to the ice as if they were raindrops. 

The figures burst asunder and swirled tightly together, as if grasping to one another with the desperation of lovers long parted. 

The shattered crown blazed anew, reforged in the starless sky. 

The falling Dust surged forth once more—not out of the world but back into it. The glimmering motes shot and swung in the air, streaming endlessly towards her. Her golden hair seemed to shine as the particles swirled about, and she felt a soul deep contentment. 

Wondrous and ethereal voices whispered in her ears. They were not frightening as they had been in the abyss of the dream world; they were urgent. She furrowed her brow and focused all her attunement to the natural world to hear those desperate voices. 

In a symphony of beautiful sounds that brought forth hot tears from Serafina Pekkala’s bright eyes—the voices merged into one: the voice of a woman. 

“ _ Go now, good Queen,”  _ the sublime voice whispered, almost as a plea. “ _ Go to the wayward mother, cast adrift by fate. Go to the lady of the Garden, whose enemies draw near.  _

_ Knives in the dark are drawn—lusting for her sacred lifesblood. Go to the princess of the gyptians, she shall need their aid once more. Go to the daughter of the bear-king, whose gifted title she wears. _ ” 

Serafina Pekkala furrowed her eyebrows and grasped desperately for meaning in the meandering riddle. The voice’s fear shocked her; such heavenly beings should not feel such terror. Its desperation reminded her starkly of those terrible eyes of burning gray that had glared from the depths of the abyss. 

In a startling moment of clarity she realized that those had been the eyes of the enemy; that whoever they were—they were out for someone’s blood. A shock of cold understanding shot up her spine and settled in her stomach like lead as the voice cried out one last time.

“ _ Find her, good Queen Serafina Pekkala! Find the mother of the Garden! Go to her now! He has sent forth his servants; time runs short! Find her! Find her! Find her! Protect her! Serve her! Guide her! _ ”

The swirling Dust flashed out in a brilliant eruption of millions of gleaming particles and the wretched pull at her navel returned—this time drawing her out of the world of dreams. She shot upwards, faster and faster, through layers upon layers of fog before she abruptly broke free. 

************** 

Her wide green eyes shot open and her clenched lungs drew desperate breaths. Her skin shone with a thin sheen of sweat as her back heaved. 

Serafina scrambled up from her bed of dark green leaves, stumbling blindly over roots and stones. 

She rummaged through a pale trunk wrought of ironwood and twisted metal— searching blearily for a shift to cover her nakedness. She slipped the wispy, silk like cloth over her clammy and unnaturally pale skin.

Serafina crept out of her hut of bent boughs and twisted northern grasses, and moved swiftly along the edge of the placid, steaming water. Even in her determined delirium she took care not to tread through Lake Enara’s sacred waters. Serafina moved silently through the long, pale grass along the water’s edge, stepping around and over her gently sleeping sisters. 

She picked out her cloud pine branch immediately; intimately familiar with its unique twists and bends. 

She slowed for only a moment to speak softly to a watchful sentinel. The dutiful witch, bow in hand—blinked owlishly at her Clan Queen.

“I must go swiftly sister. I can afford no time to explain.” Her stern, regal voice quivered slightly, damaged by the awful terror of the night. “Allow none to leave in my absence and send out an urgent message to the Clan Queens. Call them here, to our home. Tell them that strife is coming—greater even than Asriel’s war. Tell them our people shall perish if we do not band together. Warn them not to walk through the world of dreams; it is no longer a haven for us. Do this as I fly, sister—with all haste!” 

Serafina left her sister there, blinking and making as if to speak before thinking better of it and sprinting off to do her queen’s bidding. 

She mounted her cloud pine branch and shot off into the northern sky—blessedly still lit by the arcing fire of the aurora. 

Serafina reached out and squeezed desperately upon her dæmon’s bond, pushing through what meaning she could. She could only hope that Kaisa understood and that he would fly with all the power in his wings for Oxford. 

The final words spoken by that ethereal voice rang ceaselessly in her mind:

" _ Find Eve!”  _


	3. A Summer's Evening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyra Silvertongue and her bench.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited and re-uploaded 7/13/2020

"...Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion of the rose;

They were but sweet, but figures of delight..."

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 98

In the haze of a late summer’s eve, starlings squawked and swooped. Their black plumage, shot through with greens and purples, rustled in the warm breeze. Young birds, stumbling in flight, struggled to keep to the air. Their mother’s cooed softly and prodded with insistent yellow beaks—urging their hatchlings to test their frail wings. The weakest of the flock watched warily from the banks of the stream below. A few more adventurous infants poked at the bubbling water, beaks spluttering and beady eyes blinking furiously. The eldest of the gentle host sat some way off, called neither by the endless expanse of the evening sky nor the entrancing swirls of the stream’s twisted algae blooms: These birds had lived full lives. Lives of hunting and fleeing; of gliding low over dark water and soaring high into the cascading clouds. They had taken their fill of danger and excitement—those were the pursuits of the young and impulsive. Now, graced with the wisdom of age, they sat patiently, waiting for their meal to come.

The hardened clumps of stale bread came irregularly. One day could see a dozen morsels for each elder, perhaps even a portion for a particularly clever adolescent. They knew it was only a matter of time until they feasted once more. Sadly, however—today did not appear to be so profitable. Not a single loaf sat in sight, primed for their readily waiting beaks. Thus far, all that had been gained for their patience was an incessant scratching. 

It would cease for a moment, giving way to the rustle of worn parchment, crinkled and curled at the edges, only to return just as suddenly. 

More than one elder contemplated simply pecking at the parchment itself; perhaps it was a strange sort of thin bread. One of the ravenous starlings likely would have attempted to do so if not for the damned rodent.

The furred beast seemed not to notice its wary audience, slinking through the uncut grass along the stream. Its red coat flashed with streaks of gold in the dim light of evening. The animal was of decent length and admirable girth. Its pointed black nose pressed into the soft mud with a squelch and it snorted harshly. 

Its intended prey honked in alarm and splashed its gray wings in the shallow stream. The mallard squawked to the other few ducks, kicking urgently with its webbed feet to escape their clumsy foe. The rodent hissed as it leapt, its long body uncurling to reach out for the fleeing ducks. 

It landed on its stomach with a great splash—disappearing below the rippling water. The host of ducks honked and paddled as they floated swiftly away. The little starlings on the bank of the stream came soaked and squawking to their mothers’ sides. 

Its stout nose poked out of the water first, shooting a stream of water up as it came. The rest of the red rodent came soon after, dripping and morose as it crawled from the warm water. 

The constant scratching ceased, accompanied by an annoyed huff—as the giver- of-bread finally noticed their patient vigil.

“I haven't got anything for you today,” the giver-of-bread said, “Don’t look at me like that, damned birds. Go on, go find your own food for once.”

The giver-of-bread kicked a pebbled towards them, waving expressively with her hands as she did. The wisest of the elders understood immediately: They were not wanted today and it was best not to agitate the giver-of-bread—lest she provide less of her stock. 

One by one, the starlings trundled off down the stream, passing the dripping rodent as they went. The red and gold beast hissed in threat; the starlings only squawked back; they knew he was no true danger to them. The dark feathered birds flapped their wings and pushed off the soft ground with their orange talons—gliding into the encroaching night to join their brethren in the roosts.

****************** 

“You’re not nearly as frightening as you’d like to think,” she said, cringing as Pantalaimon snorted and shook the lingering damp from his shimmering coat. 

“I’ll get’m one day, you’ll see.”

She tried, rather fruitlessly, to imitate her mother’s imperious glare. She possessed all the fire and conviction of Marisa Coulter, but lacked the necessary condescension to play the part. On her face it seemed more frustrated and irritable than authoritative. 

Pantalaimon simply flicked his dripping tail in her general direction and darted beneath her legs with a rodent’s chitter. 

“If you soil my book it’ll be you explaining why all the pages are curled and soggy when I return it. Lavniov won’t be happy with you,” she said, wiping at the dark watermarks with the edge of her teal skirt. 

Sir Henry Otterman’s, _ Accounts of the Samoyed Orations on Divinity _, a thick tome that smelled vaguely of charcoal and burnt coffee, lay open in her lap. The book’s pages were yellowed with age and crinkled slightly at the edges; its strained binding seemed fit to burst. 

As a general rule, Lyra tried her damnedest to avoid literature that echoed the magisterium's approved dogma. But in this case, it simply could not be helped. 

Sir Henry Otterman, a prominent member of the Royal Arctic Institute some years past—was the premier scholar of the Samoyed culture. Though for all his great knowledge, he was no poet; Otterman’s style was about as compelling as a ship’s manifest.

“You know he won’t care; the old man thinks you're a saint,” Pan whispered from where he hid, curled tightly under the bench. 

That, she could not deny; Dr. Dimitri Lavniov positively _ adored _her. The gray haired, stout man would most definitely be considered elderly and yet he still had such zeal for teaching. 

The professor had shown up in Oxford inexplicably clad in torn clothes—dried blood caking his brow. The Master had recognized the emaciated shell immediately as an old colleague and sometimes friend. After being clothed and thoroughly stuffed with what must have been more food than he had seen in weeks, Dr. Lavniov told the Master his story. 

Lyra blinked at the dense paragraphs stacked one after the other—failing in her quest to resume where she had left off. The chipped nail of her bare index finger slid roughly down the page, stopping periodically at a familiar sentence before continuing on. Her fatigue-addled brain interjected constantly in her fruitless search, blowing fresh air on the simmering embers of her frustration. Finally, after far longer than she had thought possible, she found the passage in question. Pen in hand—she scribbled out notes in her nearly indecipherable script. 

_ Dame Hannah would rap my knuckles with a carpenter's rule if she looked through my notes. _ She smiled fondly at the memory of the stern old matriarch of St. Sophia’s College.

Dame Hannah Relf’s straight gray hair and cold glare had frozen the heart of many a disobedient student. Her severity, however, was most often rewarded with stunning academic success. None could deny Dame Hannah’s role in propelling St. Sophia’s to the pinnacle of young women’s education. Her style of a demanding work schedule combined with ruthless standards hammered the young women of St. Sophia’s into premier scholars—making hundreds of breakthroughs in their respective fields. 

Only last week, a former student had been awarded the Royal Medal of Literary Excellence, beating out hundreds of male scholars for the prestigious honor. The woman’s acceptance speech had very explicitly credited Dame Hannah’s tutelage for her stunning success. 

None but the magisterium itself questioned her hold on Oxford’s young women and with the protection of the Master of Jordan College, Dame Hannah remained entirely untouchable to the Church.

To Lyra, however, Dame Hannah Relf transcended the role of a brutal taskmaster. It had been she who had taken it upon herself to guide Lyra in the early days—when all was fresh and new and strange, Dame Hannah offered a haven from the world. Apart from the Master himself, Dame Hannah remained the only person in Oxford that knew her story. In truth, Dame Hannah knew _ far _more than the Master ever would. 

In the cold darkness of those first lonely Oxford nights, Lyra lay awake and alone. The spot beside her sat empty but for the curled and equally restless Pantalaimon. Had it been mere weeks since another had been there, snoring softly against her brow; since she had slipped, dreamless, into sleep—held fast in beloved arms? How could the gelid emptiness of solitude be the right course? What did Xaphania know of human comfort? Nothing! Nothing. Nothing. 

So too did Lyra _ feel _ nothing in the uncomfortable glare of daytime. Only in the darkness did emotion stir—hot and furious in her gut. The tears left quickly, she had so few left to shed. Resigned to the immutable truth of her loneliness, Lyra crumpled within herself. But _ never _—never would that pain be known by the bearers of pity; it was hers alone to suffer. Dame Hannah, however, had disagreed. 

Late one cool night of that first wretched month, Lyra lay listless atop the shingled roof of her dormitory on the rear quadrangle of Jordan College. Her eyes were open but unseeing, lost amongst the phantoms of memory. She lay in this way when the small roof-top door creaked open, and remained unmoved even when the old woman had sat gently beside her—huffing with the strain of well-worn knees. Dame Hannah said nothing for a long time, watching the twinkling of the starry multitudes and waiting. 

“Why are you here?”. She said it bluntly, and by the standards of conversation with one’s elders, exceedingly rudely. 

Dame Hannah did not seem to mind, looking to her for the first time since her unexpected arrival. Surprisingly, Lyra found no pity in her gaze.

“It's awfully discourteous to wake your neighbors at such an hour. Poor Dr. Polstead hasn’t slept a wink in days.” Her Marmoset dæmon, Jesper, his dark eyes blinking owlishly, sat opposite to Lyra. He sniffed the air and peered about, searching fruitlessly for some unknown thing. “Where has your dæmon gotten off to at this hour, you know how dangerous it is for others to know of your...Individuality.”

Lyra huffed at the carefully chosen language, “He’s just down in my room; he likes small spaces when he’s upset; I don’t.” She gave no more than that. What did this old woman care for her? Why would she be anything but patronizing to a girl that was surely just in a mood? But again, Dame Hannah surprised her.

“None of that young lady; I damn well know what you’ve been through. The Master made perfectly certain that he pulled every last word out.” Stern, perhaps harsh—but true. The graying scholar clucked her tongue and tapped her plain fingernail on the hard shingles. “But, brilliant as he is, the Master is only a man. It would take more time than any of us have for an elderly man to understand the lock boxes of a woman’s mind. I, however, am a woman. And I know for a fact that you haven’t told us everything.”

Lyra clenched her teeth and remained silent. Who did she think she was, pretending to know what she bore in her strained heart? Lyra scorned herself more fiercely than any other could for the melodrama of it all. She’d saved the whole damned world; no, greater even than that, _ all _the damned worlds! She was allowed to wallow in peace, wasn't she? It seemed increasingly more evident that Dame Hannah’s answer would be less than appealing. 

“It’s a boy, isn’t it? It’s _ always _a boy. Or, well, I suppose it could be a girl. Though the Church wouldn’t be too happy about that—not that they don’t already want your head on a platter.” She seemed to speak more to herself than Lyra, though her gently inquisitive eyes never left her. She opened her mouth as if to speak again and, finally, Lyra had had enough.

“A boy! It’s a boy, alright! I’m an irrational, emotional, pest of teenage girl! I get it. I don’t need your lectures.” The last bit she grumbled more than spoke, staring resolutely at the hanging sliver of the crescent moon.

The expected reprimand never came; Dame Hannah simply snorted and flicked her lightly on the ear. 

“Ah! The hell was that for?” She glared petulantly at the unimpressed scholar, rubbing at her reddening ear. 

“That,” Dame Hannah said in a most scholarly tone, “was for fallacious reasoning, an appeal to pity and a conclusion unsupported by any well cited source. Those offenses will earn you low marks in the coming term if you keep them up.” 

Lyra simply stared. What else was there to do? How do you deal with someone who is clearly unwell? 

“I’m not mad, silly girl: I’m wise—the only difference being age.” Dame Hannah folded her legs under herself in an incredibly strange position for a dignified scholar and took Lyra’s unwilling hand in her own, more wrinkled one. “Once upon a time, I too was young and new to the travails of love. Though, when I speak of that time, I was still older than you are now—but not nearly so brilliant.” She held the palm of Lyra’s hand open and turned it over, tracing the lines found there. “And you are old and wise beyond your years, little Lyra. Your eyes bear shadows that I cannot possibly comprehend, even in my losses. 

My husband succumbed to a fever many years ago; no doctor could make sense of it. The Church fathers told me to rejoice in his freedom from the suffering of our world. My sister, bless her poor heart—did what she could to comfort me; I would not _ be _ comforted.” A dormant fire slumbered within her words, long since put to rest with decades of admirable restraint. “In my rage against the doctors; against the Church; against _ God _; against even my beautiful sister—I set myself apart. I became convinced that no one could help me; that no one could possibly understand. It was arrogance really, arrogance and stupidity that kept me from feeling—that forced me into that pit. You mustn't do the same Lyra. You musn’t become as I am.” She finished her appeal and spoke no more. 

Lyra’s ears rang with the pressure that had built and built without reprieve. It seemed as if some malignant spirit poked and prodded at the backs of her eyes with a dull needle. Her throat ached and her lungs burned with the last shred of her indomitable will. It did not last; with a wrenching, heaving, wretched sob that shook the frayed and torn edges of her being—she spoke. 

“Will. His name is Will.”

That cold Oxford night had done more to mend the jagged edges of her soul than all her self-indulgent blubbering ever would have. 

Upon taking her leave later that night, Dame Hannah had extended an open invitation to last in perpetuity: If ever those dark beasts that slink and prowl at the edges of the heart drew too near—Lyra need only come to her chambers. The best distraction from unwanted thoughts could be found, in Dame Hannah’s less than humble opinion, in the pursuit of knowledge. Her door would always remain open if a late-night lecture was required to drive away the shadows. 

In her still lingering and awfully petulant arrogance, Lyra had thought little of the offer. Yet, only a few nights later—Lyra found herself at the heavy oaken door of Dame Hannah Relf’s rooms. Not a word passed between them as Dame Hannah ushered her through the threshold. 

She moved swiftly and silently to a chest of drawers ensconced between two ironwood bookshelves—searching and muttering through the faded spines of innumerable tomes. Finally, after some time and a good bit of second guessing on Lyra's part, the scholar drew a thick book wrapped in blue velvet cloth from between two similar volumes. Setting the book down on the dark mahogany desk, arranged a few paces from the shelves, and motioning for Lyra to sit in the waiting chair—Dame Hannah reached into the depths of the chest and fumbled about until a sharp metallic click rang from within. With a soft rustling and a few muttered curses, she came away from the trunk bearing a rusted tin strongbox. Sitting in the chair set opposite Lyra’s own, she pulled from her wrist a bracelet from which hung numerous minuscule keys.

“I take it you already know what I’m going to show you—given the exceptional security measures I’ve erected to ensure its safety,” Dame Hannah said, selecting a bronze tinged key from the circlet and pressing it into the strongbox’s diminutive keyhole. 

The vessel popped open with a dull click. Dame Hannah reached within the strongbox and withdrew a silver object marked with flowing, twisting and swirling lines of inlaid gold. Upon its face lay intricately drawn symbols numbering thirty-six in total. Twin hands wrought of a strange metal spun and skirted the edge of the face, stopping on one symbol only to dart off in a different direction a moment later.

“An alethiometer,” Lyra whispered, only a bit reverently. “I knew you had one, but—well, I didn’t think it’d look like _ that _.” As to what exactly she meant by ‘that’, Lyra did not know. How should an alethiometer appear? Must they all look like hers? Of course not, but to see another of these most rare and precious artifacts was jarring in its fascination. The symbols etched artfully about the rim of the instrument, archaic runes of some tongue unknown to her, provided an exhilarating air of mysticism absent in her own beloved truth-teller.

“Yes, my very own,” Dame Hannah spoke softly, running the tips of her fingers over the lustrous metal in a startlingly familiar show of fondness. “It has been in my possession for nearly forty years now and still has yet to yield all its mysteries to me.” She squinted at Lyra from over her wire rimmed spectacles and pursed her lips. “I told you the day we met, truly met I mean; those eggs you and the kitchen boy nearly hurled at me do not constitute an introduction. I told you that I would instruct you in the use of your alethiometer. Though, truthfully, you may well have more insight into the device’s nature than any scholar has possessed in all the years it has existed.” She gently slid the instrument across the polished mahogany desk to rest before Lyra’s chair. “You said you could no longer discern its messages; that the ability to wield your alethiometer has, for whatever reason, left you?”.

“Yes,” she said hesitantly—more than slightly embarrassed and frustrated by her enduring ineptitude where she had once been so gifted. “I can’t figure out the meanings anymore. Before, when Pan still hadn’t settled, I could read it real easy. All I had to do was focus on it hard enough and the symbols would just sort of unwind themselves in my mind; I never had to use one of those codices of meanings or anything. Now, though, it's all jumbled and confused. I can’t follow the needles like I used to and all the levels of meaning are gone too. I’ve tried to do it half a hundred times since I got back to Jordan, but nothing works.” Lyra hated how petulant she sounded by the end—speaking quickly and breathlessly in an awful whining voice. She couldn’t help but complain; her gift at reading the alethiometer had been stripped from her in the blink of an eye. 

“I don’t suppose it's terribly important; I am perfectly able to begin your instruction without knowing—but my scholarly instincts can't be helped,” Dame Hannah said as she carefully unwrapped the blue velvet from around the binding of the dusty tome that lay beside the silver alethiometer. “Do you know why you lost your abilities? Once one masters their mind and manages to enter the state needed to read the symbols, it is rather difficult to simply forget the process.”

“I can still do the trance-like part of it, but none of it means anything anymore. I can watch the needles spin around all day and it won't tell me anything useful.” She blew exasperatedly at the disheveled strands of wispy hair that had fallen in her eyes. “Xaphania, that rebel Angel I told you and the Master about, she said my reading the alethiometer was a gift of grace. She said I’d have to learn it on my own now—like everyone else.”

Dame Hannah paused for a moment, eyes unfocused and squinting. She undid the cloth with a slow, deliberate motion that seemed entirely absent. For a moment, Lyra though she’d had some kind of fit, perhaps even a stroke. But when she spoke again Lyra knew she’d gone somewhere in her mind. In the same way Lyra had separated herself from the world to read the symbols on the alethiometer, Dame Hannah had learned to do the same with her memory over decades of perfecting her craft.

“Grace you say?” she whispered, more to herself than to Lyra. “The Church does not speak of the theology of grace. It has long been relegated to the lost corners of scholarly thought—along with all the other ancient heresies. But, it would not be the first time the magisterium has been wrong.” She sat back in her plain wooden chair and pulled her glasses from her face, rubbing tiredly at her aged eyes. 

All at once, Lyra became conscious of what exactly Dame Hannah had done for her. This was a woman, long ago on the latter side of fifty, who bore the weight of her pupils’ needs and the unending condemnation of the Church, and yet she still offered herself up as a confidant without hesitation. 

_ Why should she bear my burdens? I’ve strength enough yet to wallow alone _. The dull scratching sound of the silver alethiometer sliding over the mahogany desk to rest before her broke the trance of self-pity. 

“You look like a jack-rabbit ready to bound away from a snarling fox—calm down girl, you’re not going anywhere. My weariness is none of your concern. However, your struggles are _ my _concern. I am your headmistress now, so I shall make this simple: Every other evening, and those nights that prove too taxing, you shall come here to my study. These sessions will be your private instruction in the methods of an alethiometerist. If you cannot accept aid when offered then I will simply call it an assignment and by doing so make it mandatory.” 

The Marmoset, who lay sprawled in the corner, scratching his floppy ears— laughed with a peculiar chittering. For her part, Dame Hannah seemed far too pleased with herself. 

Lyra tried her best to be annoyed by her frankness; to rage against the assertion that she _ needed _help—but the fight had abandoned her. Truthfully, she had not felt the fire of passion that had once guided her so acutely, since returning to Oxford. She at last bowed her head in fatigued resignation.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” Lyra said quietly. “I want to learn to read the alethiometer again. I want to have that back.” 

Dame Hannah smiled tenderly in a way that Lyra imagined a grandmother would smile, and flipped open the heavy tome of meanings. 

“Good. Let us begin.”

Awkward and stilted as that first night had been, sitting in the dim light of a naphtha lamp, bent over Dame Hannah’s alethiometer, and struggling fruitlessly to suss out any kind of message—it spawned hundreds more like it. Over the following ten years, Lyra grew and blossomed, both in her use of the alethiometer and as a young woman. As prickly as Dame Hannah could be, she became entirely different with Lyra. When, during the day, Lyra would walk by between classes as Dame Hannah handed out demerits to fidgeting first years—she would be struck by the contrast. With scholars and students alike, Dame Hannah remained strict and unyielding. But with her….With her—she became someone else entirely. 

Lyra smiled wistfully at the thought of her graying old teacher—bracketing a section of the text and scribbling out the points of importance in the margin. As attractive as the prospect of lounging about the rest of the day and shunning her research for fond memories seemed, she knew well that it could not be; the first of her lectures in the upcoming autumn term was fast approaching and the workload would remain grueling. 

Having taken a week in the early summer to rail against a motion in Parliament that promised to further violate past guarantees of the western Gyptian’s autonomy, she had fallen far behind in her schedule. Staying another three days for Tony Costa’s wedding certainly hadn’t helped, although seeing the white haired and hunched Farder Coram for the first time in a decade had more than made up for the pain of the late nights to come. 

As she waded through Otterman’s horrific use of overly complex language, she came to regret that week more and more. As her eyes drooped and her focus flagged, she came to a passage of immense interest. 

At first, she did not understand what she was reading—having mentally checked out halfway through the previous paragraph. But as she returned to the beginning of the section, tracking each word meticulously with the point of her pen, she lurched upright and scribbled furiously in the margins as she read.

Pantalaimon, who had been lazing below the bench since his embarrassment at the hands of the starlings, poked his red furred head out from beneath the bench and settled his chin on her knee.

“Did you find somethin’ Lyra? You woke me up with your foot, kicked me right in the head.” Her hand stilled at the end of the passage, marking out the length of the excerpt with an extended bracket.

“This part here,” she said, flipping the book over and pointing at the marked up section. “It’s Otterman’s description of a Samoyed shaman during a ritual to commune with the tribes ancestors.” Pan hoisted himself up onto the bench to sit beside her as she read the section aloud for him. 

“_The village shaman, Rawil, did not wish for me to witness the burial rites of my porter, Islat; he thought it sacrilege for an outsider to witness such things and argued quite furiously with the translator until my guardsman, the militant priest, gently reminded him of his predicament at the point of a rifle. How the savage thought it could be sacrilege to observe the queer rituals of these heretical populations, I shall never understand. _

_ Once the incense were lit (mostly candles wrought of reindeer fat) and the smoke had sufficiently occluded the vision of all present—the ritual began. Chanting in his savage tongue and swaying to and fro, the shaman sought to commune with the spirit of the deceased porter. The affair, bizarre as it seemed, was, at first, most humorous. However, as the smoke grew darker and the air became difficult to breathe—the shaman ceased his chant. He stilled over the incense and his eyes, barely visible through the haze, became unfocused and watery. He seemed to be entirely divorced from the world; his lips moved as if to speak but no sound came forth. For three full minutes at the least, the shaman remained all but dead. _

_ As I sat contemplating the merits of poking the man with a long stick—he woke with a shuddering gasp. His eyes cleared and he blinked rapidly as if disoriented. He murmured softly and passed his tough-palmed hands over the trepanned hole at the summit of his skull before looking to us, confused for a moment by our presence, before remembering our party with a scowl. _

_ ‘Young Islat has passed to the dead-lands; he is beyond my sight now. But his soul-partner, Ӓmirkhan, has joined with the dancing lights. The Great Mother was not pleased by your interference here; foul tidings will follow you.’ _

_ The shaman’s words were of little note and, in truth, a great source of amusement for my party. The trance which the shaman had lapsed into, however, puzzles me still. What induced such a state? An ingested herb, perhaps? Or the incense itself may have possessed psychoactive properties. I fear I shall never know the truth of it… _”. 

Lyra scowled at Otterman’s condescension towards the Samoyeds. That outlook remained the dominant approach to field work undertaken by the magisterium and its affiliated organizations. 

Pan poked the midsection of the passage and ran his clawed hand along the line of text.

“It's like the alethiometer, this trance that Otterman describes. It's the same thing I have to do when I’m taking a reading.” She scribbled down the page number in her notes and wrote out a summary. “And Dr. Malone’s sticks, too. She told me about them on the boat with the Gyptians; she said it's how she got through Cittàgazze alive.”

As she rolled up her parchments and stuffed them gently inside her beaten leather satchel, Pantalaimon read the words softly to himself. 

The sun had fallen low in the darkening evening sky—the day having fled while Lyra was absorbed by her thoughts and the thrilling new discovery. 

She pulled the tome out from beneath Pan’s paws and slipped it in beside her notes, flipping the frayed brown strap over the top and tying the satchel closed.

“It’s like the knife, too,” Pan whispered, watching her with wary eyes. “The look Will would get when he felt for a catch—it’s the same as this shaman.” 

She stopped at that, hands hovering over the satchel’s strap. Closing her eyes and breathing deeply once, twice and a third time, she exhaled and pulled the pack strap over her shoulder. 

“I’m sorry Lyra. I know you don’t like talking about him, especially not here. It’s just that, it _ is _just like the knife; it's all connected and—”. He stopped when she turned to him, mouth set in a tremulous and weary smile.

“I know you didn’t mean to rile me Pan, it’s fine.” She lowered her arm for him to scurry up to her shoulder, wrapping himself about her neck as he would to sleep at night. “And you’re right. The subtle knife, _ Æsahættr _, whatever other names it had—the process was always the same as reading the alethiometer. I think it's how we touch Dust; how we communicate with it. We can’t see it, obviously, not with the naked eye. But when we’re in that state, that trance, we can feel it. It's like a tingling in your neck that spreads out all over until the world is only you and the alethiometer; the knife; that shaman and his incense. The objects and the mediums are different, but the process is always the same.” 

Pan nipped affectionately at her ear lobe as they walked, crossing over the quaint little wooden bridge spanning the stream and winding their way through the hedges and blossoms of bright summer flowers. 

The marble sculptures shone brightly in the fading evening light—their recently polished facades reflecting her likeness as they passed. She stopped at the edge of the old limestone fountain at the heart of the Botanic Gardens, rooting around in her pockets for the foil-wrapped biscuit she’d nabbed from the kitchens of Jordan College, and broke the flaking morsel into smaller portions. The clucking starlings that tooled about in the shallow water came chirping to the pieces as she dropped them. 

“I think of her sometimes, you know; those weeks you and I were apart when you left me on the shore in the world of the dead, and she just popped into existence when I couldn't see you anymore. Serafina Pekkala told us what had to happen first—Kirjava and I. We didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to even think of it. I’d been there the moment she became a being separate from Will. I was the first thing she saw. Strong though she was, being Will’s dæmon and all—it hurt her terribly to part from me; to have to tell Will what needed to be done.” His voice did not tremble nor waver as he spoke; these thoughts, unspoken for the sake of his human, were old and worn. His heart had long ago hardened to the pain they bore. “You aren’t alone in this Lyra, remember that. I’m your soul, I feel everything you do—stronger sometimes than you do.” He burrowed his soft head into her neck and mewled gently. 

Lyra ran her hand over his shining coat and dipped the other into the fountain’s clear warm water.

“I should have pushed past it by now—it’s pathetic. I know he’s kept his promise; he made it to me and he’s never failed to keep his promises before, but that only makes it worse. He’s moved on and made his peace; gone on to build the republic where he is. What have I done? I wallow in my own pathetic fantasies.” Her visage betrayed her tone, unyielding and tough as it was; pained as much of her thoughts may be—she was Lord Asriel Belacqua’s daughter; she would _ not _be seen as weak. 

“That’s not true Lyra; you know it isn't,” Pan admonished lightly, pricking her with his small claws. “You're a scholar, and a respected one at that. You give lectures to men and women twice your age and for all their experience, you leave them stumped. You can read the alethiometer better than most and you learned to do it in a fraction of the time it usually takes. You’re not _ pathetic _Lyra; your self-hatred is. Will didn’t just wake up the morning after he went through that last window perfectly prepared to change his world; he didn’t just forget you—that's ridiculous.”

She smiled at that. 

Pan poked her in the temple with his snout and flicked at her eyebrows with his scarlet tongue. 

She pushed off the fountain’s edge, sending the snacking starlings fluttering off over the walls of the garden—and righted the satchel strap.

The panes of the greenhouses glinted brightly in the glare of the evening sun, the aromatic scent of their colorful occupants lending a comforting familiarity to her walk. 

She waved to Mr. Averies, the old stooped over gardener, and bid him a good evening as she passed. He smiled tiredly as she went by, laying down his green-tinted spade a moment to call out, “And to you, Miss Lyra! Don’t be gettin’ in any trouble now. _ I _wouldn’t want to get chewed out by that professor of yours.”

“Of course not, my radiant friend. I am the portrait of a proper young lady.” She stuck her nose high in the air as she spoke; the gardener’s brown basset hound dæmon laughed lowly from where she lay dozing. Lyra waved once more to the jovial old man and went on through the gate house, pushing open the creaking-hinged and rusted gate. She latched the exit behind her and clicked the lock shut with her personal key, gifted to her by Mr. Averies during her third week of studying into the evening on her favored bench. She knew that her elderly friend would retire to his chamber soon enough.

She turned around to go on her way up High Street, towards Jordan, when a truly queer sight greeted her. Far up on the crenellations and spires of Magdalen College, amidst the many lattices and buttresses of the medieval architecture—a tremendous horde of starlings had gathered. While that on its own may not have been so odd, the starlings of Oxford being known to nest on the many roofs of campus buildings, the birds were entirely silent. Bar a few errant scratches of talons or croaks of an infant, they made no sound at all. 

The peculiar corkscrew sensation of fear traveled sharply up her back and pooled in her neck as she realized that they were looking at her—_ staring _at her. At that moment they did not seem to be birds, their eyes too focused and intent. The tightness expanded into her arms and her scalp and struck her with its familiarity. 

_ The shaman _ , she thought, _ the incense _.

As if by a force not her own, and it may well have been—given her past journeys and experiences—the summit of Magdalen College’s greatest spire drew her attention. 

Erected there and blazing unnaturally in the fading light, stood a proud, golden crucifix. Its surface glinted and shone bizarrely, nearly ethereally—casting the steep slopes of the spire in a brilliant vermilion hue. The space around the crucifix seemed itself to be alive, shifting and rustling like fine silk caught up in a breeze. Flecks and motes of gold and silver flickered and died and swirled about, reminding her starkly of Dr. Malone’s spyglass with its special amber lenses.

She blinked rapidly and snapped her head about at the distant scuffle of shoes on the uneven cobblestone of the road. For a moment, she did not understand what she was seeing. A form, wrapped up in black cloth, tied at the waist with a thick white rope, moved swiftly towards her. As her faculties returned to her, Lyra realized, embarrassingly, that the figure was simply a brother of St. Giles Oratory; the black cloak that trailed slightly at his feet—only the customary cassock of devout worshipers. 

She politely greeted the man, but stopped upon recognizing him. Scowling, her half raised arm fell back to her waist. 

Brother Thomas Kircher, a younger resident priest of the magisterium at St. Giles, moved swiftly and rudely passed her. He neither nodded to her, as would be polite between less than friendly colleagues, nor even recognized her existence as he swept passed. His upsettingly large moth dæmon stared unblinkingly at her from where she perched on the priest’s shoulder. 

While thoroughly annoyed by the encounter, Lyra could not claim to be disappointed that he had not stopped for small talk. Not once in his two years in Oxford had a conversation ended amicably between them. 

Brother Kircher, upon first meeting Lyra in a lecture given by the former head priest of the Oratory, a reform minded Father of the magisterium in vocal opposition to the crimes of the General Oblation Board and the Consistorial Court of Discipline, had expressed the view that, as a woman, it was not her place to question Church doctrine. 

Given that the comment had been made during an open discussion amongst the scholars of Oxford, the Father had been, understandably, enraged by his new charge’s disrespect for one of St. Sophia’s most promising young scholars. Truthfully, the Father’s intervention had spared Brother Kircher a broken nose, and saved Lyra from a lecture on restraint. 

Unfortunately, that same open-minded Father and many of his reformist pupils were, not long after, thrown out of their positions by a shake up in Geneva. No one seemed to know exactly what happened in the gathering called at the Church’s capital—only that after ten years of liberalization and reform, the reactionaries in the magisterium had grown weary of their more open-minded peers. That shift had been echoed across the continent, sparking crack downs in Muscovy and the gyptian settlements. 

Lyra watched him go for a moment longer, whispering insults under her breath to Pan, who, for his part, had not looked away from the spire. 

His black eyes were blown wide and unfocused, entranced by some force unknown to her. She prodded and poked at him until, finally, he blinked rapidly and whispered a vague apology. Thoroughly annoyed with both Brother Kircher’s existence and Pantalaimon’s lack of attention, Lyra continued on her path—striding briskly up High Street; away from Magdalen College and its strange birds. 

She hadn’t gone far, however, when she stopped once more at the sound of a low hissing. The noise came from the thick green bushes that ran along the northern edge of Magdalen College. Expecting yet another unwanted interaction, peculiar phenomenon, or perhaps even a threat—she ventured forth warily to poke at the foliage. As she reached to part the bushes and see what lay within, she was met by a familiar pair of amber eyes and a swishing orange tail. 

“Hyperion?” she whispered, crouching down to the fox dæmon’s level. “Why are you here? _ How _are you here?”. 

She knew with relative certainty that this dæmon’s human had ventured neither to the world of the dead nor the icy ritual grounds of the northern witches, and could decidedly _ not _be parted, in any great distance, from her dæmon’s side. And, truthfully, he wasn’t far from her at all. 

Lyra reeled back with an unladylike yelp as a young woman’s grinning face stuck out from the bush just above the fox. She fell to the cobblestones with a smack-thud and groaned. 

“You scared me half to death, you shit!”

Elizabeth Typhenon threw back her head and laughed. 


	4. Berlin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> William Parry and Kirjava.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before reading this, I recommend that you go back and re-read the first three chapters. I have conducted significant edits (they were in pretty awful shape when I first posted them last year) and a number of minute revisions. If you don't want to do that I will now list the changes that I can think of off the top of my head: added in a sentence to the prologue about the door to the world of the dead closing in order to fix that glaring plot hole, changed the name of the queen of the Lake Visha witches (I didn't realize that the name I originally used was the witch that killed herself in the Subtle Knife after murdering John Parry), and a few other alterations.

(Berlin Painting by Juan Bosco)

"Under der linden an der heide,

dâ unser zweier bette was,

dâ mugt ir vinden

schône beide gebrochen bluomen unde gras.

vor dem walde in einem tal -

tandaradei!

schöne sanc die nachtigal."

-'Unter der Linden', Walther von der Vogelweide

Although the enchanting lullaby of a cricket's song might dazzle the ears of those who dwell in the rolling hills of the Bavarian countryside—the city has charms of its own. 

The dry warmth that suffused the gently lit streets of cobbled stone gifted the narrow alleyways along the river’s edge a pleasant stillness. The Spree, ever placid in the tenderness of a Berlin night—flowed along its walled banks and splashed softy against the stone slope. The long river boats, moored for the night to the flagstone steps carved into the river walls, bobbed and bumped against the bank. The heart shaped linden leaves bowed over the river’s edge and the distant strumming of a violinist along the far off footbridge charged the tender night with a palpable air of wild romance. 

A man, blond of hair and blessed with over-bright eyes of a joyous blue, and a woman, black haired and gifted with brilliant verdant eyes—strolled contentedly along the gravel path lining the bank. Divorced from all the world but each other, and one with the spirit of the night, body and soul, they clung to one another in the fantastic understanding of their mutual adoration. 

The surrounding air tingled with the unwavering truth of their affection. They whispered the sweet nothings of unburdened lovers and rejoiced together in their own small Eden. 

The woman laughed and nudged the man away with a joking prod. 

Reeling in mock injury and grasping at his phantom wound—the man stumbled away towards the cold steel railing along the river’s edge. Neither had seen nor recognized the man that leaned against that very same stretch of railing, staring into the black depths of the Spree, a dark cellphone pressed to his ear. 

The leaning man jarred roughly at the sudden weight of the thoughtless passerby upon his back and turned about with wild eyes, left-hand plunging into the depths of the satchel he bore. The two startled men blinked at one another before the lover, flushed now from embarrassment as well as passion, forced out a confused and stuttering apology. 

The wild eyed man with thinning black hair relaxed once more against the railing and accepted the apology with a curt nod—withdrawing his trembling, three-fingered hand from his satchel.

The woman took her lover’s arm and pulled him on down the path, laughing quietly at his expense. 

The man looked back only once, as if to offer a second apology, but looked away just as quickly when he met the other man’s unnaturally intense gaze. 

The woman, oblivious to his sudden disquiet, smiled and whispered and joked as before. The tingling fear of being watched did not leave the man until the two turned into a side street lined with cafés and strode off into the summer night. 

**********

His fingers remained clenched around the thin leaflet stuffed hastily into the disorganized depths of his brown satchel. What he had intended to do with the paper copy of his revised work schedule, made to accommodate new renovations, he didn’t fully know. Throw it in the man’s face? Inflict an agonizing death by a thousand paper cuts? Bore his assailant into a deep sleep with the minutiae of the Pergamon’s construction plans? 

It didn’t matter in the end; he hadn't been in any danger. He forced his trembling, three-fingered hand to relax and tried his best to remember what Mary had told him to do when panic took hold. He breathed deeply, in and out. The reckless passerby had looked more terrified than Will felt when he looked back over his shoulder. 

Kirjava’s incessant clawing at his ankle and the high, clipped tone of Mary’s voice pulled him out from beneath the hazy veil of irrational terror. 

“Will? Will, darling? Can you hear me? Oh, God dammit all to hell! I should’ve gotten the Deutsche Telekom international plan.” He blinked at the black plastic of his cellphone, listening to the scratching of something being moved about on the other end and the soft huff of Mary’s disgruntled breathing. 

“Speak, Will. You know how she is—she’ll think you’ve been abducted by some Bulgarian artifacts dealer,” Kirjava purred softly as she wrapped her sleek body around the ankle of his boot. She toyed with the done up laces, picking at the knot in a half-hearted attempt at unwinding it. 

He brought the phone to his ear again with shaky hands. 

“I’m here, still here. Some drunk nonce bumped into me. The cell plan is fine, Mary, you don’t need to bankrupt yourself on my account.” He shifted from foot to foot as he leaned against the cool steel of the railing. The shuffling on the other end stopped and Mary breathed a tired and garbled sigh through the receiver.

“I’ll spend my money as I please, William Parry. It just happens to be the case that the best thing I have to spend it on is you. Ensuring your financial well-being is a part of my job, you know—even if you aren't legally my responsibility anymore.” 

He laughed softly and, despite his enduring discomfort with taking any kind of charity, made no attempt to apologize for the burden. Her aid had been the source of their first true fight, long ago when he was still somehow shorter than her. His pained gratitude, first for a new pair of shoes bought to replace his old trainers when the soles had begun to peel away, and later for her bankrolling most of the out-of-pocket expenses incurred by his four years of secondary school—had driven a wedge in their fledgling arrangement. 

His learned sense of independence, born from his faux-childhood spent caring for his mother and the intensity of his adventures in the worlds beyond his own—made submitting to the care of a pseudo maternal figure incredibly difficult. Time and growing familiarity proved to be the only antidote to his reluctance.

“Of course. Your contribution to my not being homelessness is appreciated. I don’t exactly have many people to call; the plan fits my purposes well enough.” 

Mary hummed faintly on her end. The sharp click and clack of a keyboard sounded somewhere in the background and Mary mumbled something about needing to submit a sample to the lab for identification. 

“Why are you still at work? The time difference is only an hour between us; it's nearly nine o’clock in Oxford.”

“Oh, I’m just putting a few things in order. Nothing terribly exciting, a few reports to file and interns to chase down.” Her voice lost its dull tone when next she spoke, light and excited in the queer way his mother’s would be when she had been lucid enough to follow what he said. “James and Joseph are due in tonight, aren’t they? You said last week that they were taking the I.C.E up from Munich in the morning.” 

Kirjava purred and coiled tighter about his ankle at the mention of his friends. For once, he actually agreed with her: it would be good to be with them again, even if they were only coming to help him pack. 

“Yeah, their train’s supposed to pull into the Hauptbahnhof at eleven. I had to send the directions to James this morning. Joseph insists that he knows how to get to the Alexanderplatz from the station; I don’t trust his one weekend in Berlin during first-year to be enough experience for him to not end up in Saxony.”

Mary laughed and the noise echoed strangely through the phone. “I’m sure James is entirely capable of corralling him. It didn’t look like Joseph was lacking in attention where James is concerned last I saw them.” Her tone was sly and suggestive, and Will could not help the smile that pulled at the corner of his lips. 

He did not rightly know what was happening between Joseph Falk and James Edwards—but he could certainly hazard a guess. Despite their closeness, James and Will were not normally interested in divulging their deepest secrets and desires to one another; it simply did not fit either of their personalities. 

Joseph, however, was quite the opposite of both his friends: Charismatic, joyful, optimistic, and friendly. He was a simpler subject for Will to understand, and thus provided most of the insight into Joseph and James’ Relationship that Will possessed. 

Joseph was openly and proudly homosexual. There had been a few boyfriends who passed through their triumvirate during their first years at university like the seasons: Always gone by the end of the third month. Will was completely certain of Joseph’s changing interest in James; he was less sure about the latter. 

“No, I’ve not known him to be adverse to staring,” Will said. “Though I’m not sure how much he actually hears.”

Mary sighed and Will could faintly make out the scratching of a pen on paper. From the other side of the Spree, some ways down—the great clangor of a church bell rang out, marking the passing of the hour. 

“Will,” Kirjava said in a warning tone. She unwrapped herself from around his ankle and stretched in the long, languorous manner that cats are wont to do.

He didn’t answer; she knew he understood. Will started off again, walking at a brisk pace along the walled bank of the river. 

“I’ve got to go, Mary; the Pergamon locks up for the night at nine-thirty, and I still need to collect the last of my things.” 

Will nodded to a decently talented street performer as he crossed the old stone bridge that stretched from one side of the Spree to the other—tossing a two-euro coin into the man’s open guitar case as he passed.

“You’ve had all week to clear out your office, Will. I don’t think you have any grounds to criticize my work habits anymore; you’ve turned into a bigger, man-shaped Mary Malone.” She had meant it as a light admonishment, he knew—but she could not manage to keep her fondness for him from creeping in. 

“Yes, well, I learned from the best,” he said softly. “I really do have to hang up now; I’m about to get to the metal detectors.” 

“Oh, alright. I’ll let you go now, but you must promise me that you’ll come home before you start on your graduate work,” she said, with an edge of true reprimand.

Will winced at her sharp, but honest, rebuke. He had not done right by her during his undergraduate years in Munich; Will knew he needed to make up for it. 

“Of course I’ll come home, Mary,” he whispered. “Mark your calendar for September first.” 

“I’ll accept that much for now, Will,” said Mary. “Remember to tell James and Joseph hello for me when they manage to find your flat.” 

“Good night, Mary.”

“Good night, Will.”

He hung up and slipped his small cell phone into his pant’s pocket. 

The Pergamon Museum, crowning jewel—in Will’s heavily biased opinion—of Museumsinsel, was grand and wondrous in the soft evening light. Its great columns of marble rose high into the air and held aloft the immense awning that covered the approach to the museum’s entrance. He had passed through this same walkway hundreds of times during his three-month-long internship in the New Artifacts Department at the Pergamon—but the view never failed to impress him.

Kirjava sniffed at the assorted plants that lined the edge of the path, slipping in between columns as she did. When they finally came to the staff entrance and its rows of metal detectors, she quickly returned to his side—clawing impatiently at his sock covered ankle. For whatever reason, the metal detectors did not agree with Kirjava and left her faintly nauseous; Will carried her through each time they were forced to confront them. It did not alleviate the effect, but it was a comfort all the same. As always, the on-duty security guard looked confusedly at the way Will held his arms. They could not see Kirjava, so Will really couldn’t blame them for it. 

The halls of the Pergamon were illuminated by the dim emergency lights that replaced the normal fluorescent bulbs after-hours. _ The German’s and their environmentalism _, he thought. It was a perfectly serviceable amount of light to navigate the wide-open exhibit halls of the museum; Will made his way through swiftly and without delay.

He glanced briefly at a few exhibits as he went—admiring the brilliant craftsmanship of the blue-tiled Gates of Babylon as he passed under them. There was one painting, however, that stopped him—as it always did. 

The painting depicted a woman with kind features and soft, red hair. She was sitting alone in a lush, verdant garden with a white alabaster jar—dripping yellow oil, held in her folded hands.

“Security is going to kick us out in a few minutes, Will,” Kirjava said. “We really can’t hang around.” Despite her insistence, Kirjava was just as captivated with the beauty of the painting as Will was. 

“I know, I know—but we haven’t got that much to pick up and this is the last time we’re going to be able to look at anything, at least for a while.” 

It would be a terrible shame to lose out on the opportunity to view the grand collection of the Pergamon one last time—especially this painting; it was usually in restoration. Given that it was nearly two-thousand years old, painted by an unknown artist in the late first century A.D in modern-day Marseille, it took quite a bit of work to preserve.

Will sighed and stroked Kirjava’s lustrous black fur. He took one last good look at the painting and turned away—continuing on to the code-locked entrance to the research offices. He punched in the pass code—fourteen-fifty-three, a reference to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks—and pushed the door open. 

Immediately, Will came face to face with a flushed and harried young man. Kirjava slipped from his fingers with a yelp as the man barreled past him, taking no notice of Will’s presence. 

He watched, dumbfounded, as the man stumbled through the doorway and disappeared around the corner. The security door clicked shut and locked; Will had still not looked away. 

“What the fuck was that?” Will exclaimed. _ Mary would tell me to wash my mouth out with soap if she could hear me. _

“I have no idea,” Kirjava huffed angrily, licking at her now-matted fur. “Let’s make this quick, Will. That guy gave me the heebie jeebies.” 

He squinted down at her, “_Heebie jeebies _? Really?”

“Shut up and get moving.” She padded forward on deft paws and poked at his closed office door with her flat nose. Kirjava looked back at him and if a cat could roll its eyes, she would have. “I heard Mary say it once.” 

_ Well, that would explain it. _ Will fished around in his pockets for a moment, withdrawing a small bronze key and inserting it into the keyhole of the office’s thick door. When he turned the key, however, there was no click; the door was already unlocked.

“Karl must have left it open when he went home,” he mumbled to himself. 

Will pushed the door open and immediately set to work finding the few things he had yet to bring back to his flat. Most of what he had left consisted of various research materials he had accumulated during his time in Berlin, most notably: A third century edition of the _ Gospel of Thomas _ , three Paleo-Indian arrowheads, a marked up copy of Bartolomé de las Casas’ collected diaries, and an 1889 German publication of Marx’s _ Das Kapital _. None of the items were in any way connected. 

It took Will a few minutes to find everything; he wasn’t very organized and it was coming back to bite him at the worst moment. Finally, once he had collected everything other than the _ Gospel of Thomas _, he turned around and crossed the office to the shelf he was pretty sure he’d left it on the day before—set atop a newly received artifact submission that had yet to be vetted for authenticity: A spear of some kind. But the shelf was empty of both the book and the box. 

Will scratched his head and looked quickly through the other books arrayed on the shelf; perhaps it had simply been missorted. Just when he was about to give it up as a lost cause, Kirjava called out from behind him.

“It’s right here, Will—on the floor next to Karl’s desk.” She poked at the book with her whiskered face, snorting as the old tome left her nose filled with dust.

He went over and picked up the book with gentle fingers, cursing Karl’s negligence as he did. _ It’s seventeen-hundred years old! How could an archaeologist, of all people, be so careless _? Will cursed the fact that he was leaving and wouldn’t get the chance to punch Karl in his smug, German face.

“Can we go now?” Kirjava asked impatiently, already pacing in front of the door. 

Will placed the book into his satchel alongside the rest of his things and crossed back to the door, taking Kirjava in his arms again. 

“Yeah, let’s get out of here.” 

They made their way out of the staff hallways and back through the museum’s quiet exhibits. He stopped to look back at his favorite painting, one last time, from below the Gates of Babylon—only to find that the space was now empty. He sighed and continued on his way. It had been a few weeks since the maintenance crew had taken it down for restoration; he would just have to wait until he was back in Berlin to see it again. 

They passed through the metal detectors at the staff entrance, now unguarded by the security crew as they conducted their nightly shift change—and set off for the Alexanderplatz. 

********

“Kirjava,” he said—as he rooted around under the bathroom sink, “do you remember where I left the nail clippers?”. Will slowly backed himself out of the tight space, mindful of the low head clearance afforded by the cabinet, and sat with his back to the cheap, fogged glass of the shower stall. 

“No, of course I don’t,” she said from some distance. “Why would _ I _ know where _ you _left the nail clippers? I’m a cat—I don’t use them. I don’t even have thumbs!” 

Will poked his head out into the dimly lit hallway leading to his cramped flat’s kitchenette. One could not travel more than a few meters in any given direction in his temporary Berlin home. The single hallway that connected his cubicle-like bathroom, the minimalist kitchen, and his cramped bedroom with its embarrassing twin-sized bed and iron mattress—was no more than half a meter in width. But Will had no real reason to complain: it was only ever himself and Kirjava who had to contend with the low range of motion, and the rent was cheap.

Kirjava was busy with a low dangling spider, just out of the range of her paws and sharp claws, hanging in the door frame of his bedroom. She made a few valiant attempts at leaping for the poor thing, swiping at it in midair and falling back to the ground—always landing with absolute grace on all four paws.

“Can’t you just do some wacky dæmon mind-meld to pull the memory of where I left them out into the forefront of my mind?” he asked, only partially joking; he truly did not understand the full range of a dæmon’s abilities where their human-half was concerned—even after a decade. 

“No,” she said curtly. “I do not believe that I could do such a thing and even if I could, I would not abuse the ability to help you find your _ nail clippers _.” She glanced away from the spider to pin him with her incisive and, at the moment, mocking, dark stare. “Just buy new clippers if you can’t find them. It’s not like they’re expensive.”

“What’s the use of having a dæmon if they can’t do any useful magic?” he asked, ignoring her annoyed huff. He pushed himself up from the bathroom floor, giving up his fruitless search as a lost cause, and made his way to his bedroom. “I could just as well have a pet cat instead. Moxie would have helped me.”

Kirjava slipped between his legs and leaped up onto the bed, settling next to the last box of his belongings to be packed—sniffing at its contents with faint interest. 

“Don’t degrade me to the level of a common house cat, Will. Besides, you left Moxie by herself so long that she ran away; you aren’t exactly a model pet owner.” She lost interest in the box, having found that it was only a few last-minute items: a five-centimeter tall figurine of the Fernsehturm Will had bought as a souvenir for Mary a few weeks ago, a half used bottle of anti-dandruff men’s shampoo, various escapist fiction books he’d come across in kiosks, and a battered issue of _ Foreign Affairs _. “Why are you packing an American magazine that you don’t read?”

“Oh,” Will said absently, shuffling around the other few boxes of clothes and miscellaneous items littered about the room, “that’s for James. There’s an article in there about that ‘surge’ nonsense the American’s have been talking about: They want to send _ more _soldiers to Iraq—as if that will do anything for the non-existent electrical grid. You know how James is; I thought he’d get a kick out of that.” 

“He’s more likely to actually kick something than anything else,” she said. 

He laughed; she _ was _right. 

James Edwards was the son of an enlisted man in the American military who had been stationed in West Germany and the United Kingdom during the latter years of the Cold War. His father never actually saw combat, nor did he meet a single member of the Red Army—but that didn’t stop Mr. Edwards from being as gung-ho as any other American soldier. Moreover, he was also a faithful and actively practicing baptist. 

James, by the iron laws of teenage rebellion, had rapidly come to reject every tenet of his father’s strongly held beliefs. Understandably, it had made family dinners a tense affair—or so he had told Will.

Will had never actually met Mr. Edwards before; he was already out of the picture by the time that James and his mother had moved and the two, only a year into secondary school at the time, had befriended one another.

The story of that meeting was one for the ages: A tale of bullies and broken bones; schoolyard brawls and subsequent suspensions. Their friendship was forged in the solidarity of mutually poor restraint and adolescent angst.

Three solid knocks and a muffled shuffling noise from the hall beyond his apartment’s door distracted Will from his lethargic attempt at packing.

“They’re here,” Kirjava said, waving vaguely towards the hallway with one paw as she gnawed at the corner of the box. 

When Will opened the door and was greeted by his friend’s faces—one smiling brilliantly; the other standing behind the first with only a faint upturn to his lips—he felt the deep-seated sense of loneliness that had fallen over him in his months alone in Berlin fall away. Kirjava was decent enough company, but talking to her could be a bit disturbing: like speaking to himself. 

“Will, my dour British friend!” Joseph exclaimed. He stepped up on the tips of his toes, took Will by both cheeks, and pressed his lips to each. “How have you been—all on your own?”.

Joseph was a good bit shorter than Will and much smaller than James. It was comedic, really: how, if one arranged the three in row, they would form a nearly perfect linear slope. 

Despite his stature—Joseph was by far the most interesting of them. He had sky-blue eyes and light blonde hair, marred by the fading remnants of the blue hair dye he’d been experimenting with a few months prior. In almost every way, accent included, Joseph was the archetypal German. It was appropriate for their group: he _ was _the only one of them to actually grow up on the continent. 

“Better now that you two have come to liberate me from my ‘intractable dreariness’,” Will said—stepping aside and motioning them through the small doorway.

James stopped next to Will in the cramped threshold and the two clasped arms. It was an old ritual of theirs and, rather embarrassingly, was meant to mimic the greeting of two old seafaring vikings. They nodded to one another without a word and James continued on through to the kitchen where Joseph was already poking about.

“I speak only the truth, William Parry: You _ can _ be awfully dreary. The Prussians can’t have done anything good for your demeanor,” Joseph said—rifling through the few cabinets that fit into Will’s kitchen. He stopped at the last and looked up with squinted blue eyes. “Do you actually have _ no _alcohol?”

“He doesn’t partake,” James interjected from where he sat on one of Will’s rickety kitchen stools, “you know that.”

Joseph cringed faintly and leaned back against the entirely alcohol free cabinets.

“Yes, well—we’ve not seen each other in months and loneliness has an unfortunate habit of driving even the best of men to the bottle. I would not be an enterprising German if I did not seek to use our friend’s plight for my own gain. That is, to ward off my damned headache from six hours in a metal tube.” Joseph sighed and smiled wanly. “Unfortunately for me, William Parry is no normal man—held hostage by the sweet release of a well-brewed spirit.”

Will snorted and waved him off, “I’ve my own vices to contend with. Not even I can break the chains of our inherited material conditions.” 

Joseph groaned and glared balefully over his shoulder, where James was snickering quietly.

“None of that, Will; I don’t think I can take a single minute more,” Joseph said. “ Herr Edwards regaled me with his full recounting of ‘_What is to Be Done? _ ’ on the train ride. One cannot survive _ two _such conversations in one day without succumbing to abject existential horror.”

Will grinned and it was a more true and brilliant smile than he’d managed in all his months in Berlin. They were here—_ finally _here. As much as he loved losing himself in the vast archives of the Pergamon, Will knew that isolation could do terrible things to the mind, especially to one like his. 

Will was his mother’s son. He knew well that, someday, his faculties might desert him, and he would be found counting the stones in a garden wall—just as she had. It was for that same reason he did not drink. 

“My cabinets may be lacking in refreshment, but we are in a major city and a German one at that. There’s a Hofbräuhaus, not quite as nice as the true product in Bavaria, of course—just down the street.” 

James looked as though he would much rather curl up and fall asleep on a nice open space on the kitchen floor, but he said nothing when faced with Joseph’s glee at the idea.

Will pocketed his apartment key and his small cell phone, turning off the flat’s lights as he went. Kirjava only mewled softly and waved him on with her paw when he told her where they were going. He was not tethered to his dæmon as others were; she did not need to come with him, and she disliked crowds anyway. 

Joseph slipped into the washroom to relieve himself, so James and Will made their way to the ground level of the complex to wait for him on the street corner.

They watched taxis, buses and private cars go by in a comfortable silence. Will and James had never really needed to talk much to understand each other. Mary said they were cut from the same cloth: Both passionate and closed. Silence, however, did not serve his current goal. 

“How are you, Jamie?” Will asked. Few knew that James Edwards had a nickname; even fewer were allowed to use it. 

James glanced at Will from the corner of his eye for a moment and said, “I’m fine. Why?”.

It was only a flash, but in the short time that Will had gotten a decent view of his friend's gaze—he realized that he was not ready to speak of it. Whatever was happening between James and Joseph; however their relationship had changed while Will was away, it was not something for others to know just yet.

“Can’t a man be interested in his friends?” Will asked instead. They both knew that it wasn’t what he had meant to say, but neither mentioned it. 

James nudged Will lightly with his shoulder, amber eyes shining under the light of the street lamps. “Don’t get soft on me now, Parry,” he said—but his features were gentle and Will knew he understood; that James was grateful for his restraint.

Presently, Joseph emerged from the building’s revolving door and the three friends set off into the Berlin night.

******** 

It was early morning and the first rays of sunlight were barely peeking over the tops of low buildings when they stumbled back up the steps to Will’s flat. The twisting stairwell was no aid to Jamie and Joseph’s bleary, alcohol impaired faculties. Will managed the climb a bit easier—but only barely. 

That night had been, by far, the single most colorful night of his life—literally. After an hour or so of drinking and catching up in the quiet and mostly deserted Hofbräuhaus a ways down the street from the Alexanderplatz, Joseph had managed to do the impossible: he convinced William Parry to go to a Diskoteka. 

Will had been in Berlin, the global capital of ‘der Funky-Beats’, for nearly three whole months, and he never once made a point of experiencing the city's nightlife. It wasn’t something he was all that interested in. Besides, he was knee-deep in his research and his responsibilities at the Pergamon. 

Mary had told him to go out and meet a nice German girl over the phone once; it didn’t end well. Will went on three dates with a fellow intern’s friend. On the last such excursion, while having lunch near the Reichstag building, Will made a blunder of epic proportions: He accidentally told the poor girl that she looked a bit fat. It was an honest mistake, one of the few German slip ups he had fallen victim to in the last few years, given his relative fluency—but the girl had been highly offended and gave Will no time to explain himself. In hindsight, it was probably a red flag that she did not allow him to explain; she knew that German wasn’t his first language. Regardless, the experience further tainted his already fraught romantic history and closed the deal on his status as a recluse in Berlin.

Thus, Will Parry experienced the bizarre and pseudo-psychedelic atmosphere of a Prussian rave for the first time that night. Despite his self-inflicted sobriety, he actually enjoyed himself quite a bit, and not just because his friends were there: it was nice to actually be out amongst other people, and not closed away in his small office or his even less spacious apartment. 

Jamie and Joseph constituted the most interesting spectacle, even when compared to the multi-colored light shows and evanescent smoke screens. They, quite literally, danced around one another. 

Joseph was outgoing and eternally joyful; it made sense that he would take so easily to the energy of a Diskoteka. 

Jamie, on the other hand, had never once truly danced in Will’s memories of him. Perhaps it could have happened before they knew one another, or simply without Will’s presence. But on that neon dance floor, with music blaring, lights flashing and Joseph laughing at his side—Jamie went absolutely _ wild. _It was surreal and brilliantly amusing to witness. It also served as de facto confirmation of Mary’s suspicions. 

When they finally managed to drag themselves up the stairs and Will unlocked the door with his key, they all nearly fell across the threshold. Joseph threw himself onto the one beaten-up cushioned chair that Will had in his apartment and didn’t stir again. Jamie moved with less urgency, carefully and methodically arranging a few blankets on the floor beside Joseph’s chair. 

Will rubbed at his dry and bloodshot eyes, and slipped into the bathroom to wash up a bit before he sought his bed.

When he emerged after a few minutes Jaime was out cold on his blankets. Joseph, on the other hand, was no longer passed out. He didn’t seem to notice, at first, that Will was there; he watched the rise and fall of Jamie’s chest with such acute focus. Will felt entirely discomfited by it: He was witnessing a deep and personal sort of intimacy that can rarely be observed from the outside. It reminded him starkly of Balthamos and Baruch, the Angels who had found Will after his father’s death at the hands of a spurned witch.

Joseph startled slightly when the floor creaked under Will’s feet as he tried to sneak into his bedroom. They stared silently at one another for a long moment before Joseph’s lips quirked in a tired grin, and he shrugged his narrow shoulders. 

“I am afraid that, in your absence, I have become a hopeless romantic, my friend.” His smile fell a bit when he looked back to Jamie—but the awestruck gleam never left his eyes.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Will said. He motioned lamely to their friend when Joseph peered at him in question. “I’ve known Jamie for years now; a lot longer than you have. He’s good at hiding himself, it's part of why I noticed him so easily when we met: He was like me. I’ve been in love before, Joseph; I know what that looks like for people of our sort.” 

Joseph’s smile returned with its characteristic brightness, undimmed by his former doubt. 

“Gute Nacht, mein Freund,” Joseph said quietly.

“Good night, Joseph.”

Will padded down the short way to his bedroom door and slipped inside, closing the door behind him. 

He’d left his bedside light on when they went out and Kirjava, who was laid out across his pillows, had not bothered to shut it off. She stirred when he started stripping down into his underclothes to go to sleep, watching him tiredly through one cracked eye-lid. 

“You stayed out longer than I thought you would,” she said. Kirjava rolled off her perch to make room for him as he lifted the sheets and slipped under them. She lay down beside him and placed her head heavily on his stomach. 

“I know what a Diskoteka is like now,” Will said as he stared at the ceiling, still illuminated by the lamp.

Kirjava closed her eyes and asked wearily, “Really? How was it?”.

“Loud and bright.” It was the only thing that Will could think of with his fatigue addled brain, but it was a succinct enough description.

She growled lowly and with discontent: she had never been a fan of loud noises and glaring lights.

Will reached over and turned off the lamp, closing his eyes to sleep. Unfortunately, rest eluded him. He tossed and turned for some time, fluffing up his pillows and rearranging his legs. Eventually, he gave up trying. Will plucked the remote to the small box-television he’d picked up for a bargain at a second hand electronics store from his rickety nightstand. 

Kirjava, more than a bit annoyed with his restlessness, leapt from the bed and crawled beneath it to hide from the harsh light of the television.

At first, as the German-language early morning news played, he wasn’t entirely sure as to what he was seeing. He rubbed at his eyes and shook his head—but the image persisted. There on the screen, blown up to cover half the image, was a picture of his own face. It was only when his ears caught up with his eyes that the true horror of the moment dawned on him.

On the screen, beside the photograph taken from his Pergamon staff identification card, a newswoman said, “_ At this time we have very few details on the heist itself, nor do we currently know the identities of the four guards found dead in the Pergamon museum by the Bundespolizei. All we can report at the moment is that a two-thousand year old, priceless painting has been stolen from the museum. _

_ In a recent development that was only communicated to the media a few minutes ago, we can now confirm that the prime suspect is one William Parry—a British national who was, until last night, employed as a research intern in the Pergamon museum. Parry was last seen on security camera footage observing the stolen item in its exhibit before the security system was disabled and any further footage stolen. _

_ Given the vicious murder of the four museum guards, the Bundespolizei have issued a warning that Mr. Parry may be armed and dangerous. If you encounter the suspect…. _”

The newswoman was still speaking, but Will’s faculties failed him. His head felt fuzzy and the blood rushed through his ears, drowning out everything. At that moment, he was more helpless than he had been since he was a little boy and did not understand that the enemies his mother worried about were only shadows in her mind. _ What is going on? Why is this happening? What am I supposed to do? _ A million questions raced through his mind, but Will had no answers and did not seem likely to be given any.

“Will,” Kirjava whispered. Her black head was sticking out from underneath the bed; her eyes were transfixed by the screen.

Will did not respond; what was there to say? He leaned over the side of his bed and vomited onto his bedroom’s thick black rug. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for dropping this story in favor of my Star Wars piece, 'The Burden and Honor of the Mask'. I will be alternating between my two stories after each chapter is posted. As always, comments are appreciated.


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